BERLIN — The German government said Friday that it “won't be intimidated" by Russian attempts to undermine the country's support of Ukraine, but refused to comment on a report that Moscow planned to assassinate the chief executive of a leading defense company.
CNN reported Thursday, citing five unidentified U.S. and Western officials, that American intelligence discovered earlier this year that Russia planned to kill Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger. It said the U.S. informed Germany, whose security services were able to protect Papperger and foil the plot. Rheinmetall is a major supplier of military technology and artillery rounds for Ukraine.
Neither Rheinmetall nor the German government would comment on the report. Interior Ministry spokesperson Maximilian Kall said his ministry can't comment on “individual threat situations,” but added that more broadly “we take the significantly increased threat from Russian aggression very seriously."
“We know that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin's regime wants above all to undermine our support for Ukraine in its defense against the Russian war of aggression, but the German government won't be intimidated,” Kall said.
He noted that German security measures have increased significantly since 2022, and that “the threats range from espionage and sabotage, through cyberattacks, to state terrorism.”
European officials gathered for the NATO summit in Washington this week spoke of dealing with an escalation of so-called “hybrid” attacks that they blame on Russia and its allies.
That includes what authorities called suspicious recent fires at industrial and commercial sites in Lithuania, Poland, the United Kingdom, Germany and other nations, and charges that Russia-allied Belarus was sending large numbers of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa to the borders of Poland, Latvia and other countries belonging to NATO.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said he could not comment on the CNN report, but he said there has been a widespread campaign by Russian security services to conduct “hostile actions” against NATO allies. He said these included sabotage, cyber and arson attacks.
“These are not standalone instances. These are part of a pattern, part of an ongoing Russian campaign. And the purpose of this campaign is, of course, to intimidate NATO allies from supporting Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said.
In April, German investigators arrested two German-Russian men on suspicion of espionage, one of them accused of agreeing to carry out attacks on potential targets including U.S. military facilities in hopes of sabotaging aid for Ukraine.
Germany has become the second-biggest supplier of weapons to Ukraine after the United States since Russia started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago.
CNN reported that the alleged Papperger plot was one of a series of Russian plans to kill defense industry executives across Europe supporting the Ukrainian war effort.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov dismissed the report. "All of this is again presented in the fake style, so such reports cannot be taken seriously,” he told reporters on Friday.
