Armin Papperger, the president of the German arms company Rheinmetall, said in an interview in 2019 that he was little less than an outcast in his country. He complained that no one even shook his hand. Five years later, with a war on Europe’s doorstep and a chancellor determined to overturn Germany’s security and defence policy, Papperger speaks almost daily with the top political representatives. His role now is key in Western support for Ukraine in its defence against Russia. And that has put him in the crosshairs of Moscow, which, as revealed this week by the American channel CNN, planned to end his life.
The daily life of Papperger, a 61-year-old engineer, has changed dramatically in recent months. He is surrounded by a level of security that is completely unusual for a businessman. He is accompanied by bodyguards day and night, a police car is permanently parked in front of the company’s headquarters in Düsseldorf, and those who meet him undergo security checks worthy of heads of state.
The businessman was attacked at his summer home in late April and has since been accompanied by police officers at all public appearances. In fact, security forces had begun protecting him a few months earlier, when US intelligence services found out that Russia was planning to assassinate him, as CNN revealed on Thursday, citing five unnamed US and Western officials as sources. Washington alerted Berlin, which tightened security around the businessman, which according to the network thwarted the attempt to kill him.
Without explicitly confirming the report, the German government has made it clear that it takes reports of the assassination attempt, which was allegedly part of a plot to eliminate several senior European defence officials supporting Ukraine’s war effort, very seriously. “We will not be intimidated by Russia and will continue to do everything possible to prevent Russian threats in Germany,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said on Friday.
Rheinmetall is a defence giant. The company, which Papperger has chaired since 2013, is one of the world’s largest producers of artillery, with almost 30,000 employees in more than 100 countries and an annual turnover of almost 7.2 billion euros. Its growth in the past two years has been dizzying. This year alone it expects a 40% increase in turnover compared to last year and is increasing its workforce month by month to meet the huge increase in orders resulting from the war in Ukraine. The entire sector, which is reporting the largest wave of hiring since the end of the Cold War, is booming.
Factory in Ukraine
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Papperger is a key figure in the military effort to support Kiev. His company produces much of the equipment that allies send to the Ukrainian army, such as Leopard tanks, Marder infantry fighting vehicles and 155-millimeter artillery howitzers, a crucial weapon to resist the Russian invasion. Rheinmetall is also building a factory in Ukraine to locally produce the Lynx, an infantry fighting vehicle. The vice-president of the Russian Security Council and former president of the country, Dmitry Medvedev, said last year that Russia would retaliate (“fireworks of Kalibr missiles”) against any Rheinmetall facility established in Ukraine.
Papperger was no stranger to the media, but his public profile has soared with rising defence spending and Germany’s shift to prioritise defence and security after decades of underfunding its armed forces. The Rheinmetall chairman has repeatedly advocated for increased arms deliveries to Ukraine and urged the government to boost defence spending to fund them.
Rheinmetall has not confirmed the reports either, but in a statement said that “necessary security measures are always taken” after consulting the authorities. The Kremlin, for its part, has called the accusations “false.” The German weekly The Spiegel has provided new details of alleged Russian plans to assassinate Papperger. Germany received “a tip-off from a foreign intelligence service” that there were “indications of possible assassination plans” that were embodied in the presence of several individuals monitoring Papperger’s movements.
The “suspicious movements” of the men, who hail from countries in the former Soviet Union, have attracted the attention of intelligence services, which believe they are agents in the service of Russia. No arrests have emerged, although in April authorities detained two German-Russian citizens suspected of planning sabotage on German soil in an attempt to undermine military support for Ukraine. Berlin also directly accuses the Kremlin of the murder of a Chechen dissident exiled in Germany in the Tiergarten park in broad daylight in 2019.
“The threats range from espionage, sabotage and cyberattacks to state terrorism. The so-called Tiergarten murder here in Berlin has not been forgotten,” a government spokesman said on Friday when asked about the Russian plan to kill Papperger. “Nor have the conclusions of the Berlin Higher Regional Court, which explicitly spoke of state terrorism in that case. We are aware of such dangers,” he added.
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