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In the coming weeks, Rheinmetall is expected to open a factory for the production of ammunition directly in Ukraine, thus linking Ukrainian artillery with NATO...
Germany and many other countries have been alarmed today by rumors of a Russian plot to kill the CEO of Germany's largest arms manufacturer.
The news reported yesterday afternoon by CNN, is confirmed hour by hour in Germany. This is the strongest escalation of tension between the two countries since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. From what has emerged so far, the attack against Armin Papperger, CEO of Rheinmettal, was in the preparatory stages.
Rheinmetall, based in Düsseldorf, is the manufacturer of Leopard tanks, but it is also the company that committed to supply Ukraine with a million artillery shells at the most dramatic stage of the conflict, when Kiev found itself short of ammunition (due to the Republican blockade of the USA). The company is also the main pillar of the defense system that Berlin has made available to Kiev.
In the coming weeks, Rheinmetall is expected to open a factory for the production of ammunition directly in Ukraine, thus linking Ukrainian artillery with NATO. This makes it, in the eyes of the Kremlin, one of the most important Western assets. Even the main German rearmament plans go through the Rhineland company, recipient of special public funds.
So far, few details are known about the attack itself. According to CNN, US intelligence alerted the German secret services in recent months, which took Papperger into custody. The Financial Times, which was among the first to write about him, reported that Papperger's security is "at the highest level" and that the manager enjoys federal protection, similar to that of Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Yesterday afternoon he issued a statement to the Financial Times, saying that "CNN is not scanning the sky", implying that the reports about it are true. And he raised the issue with a long evening interview with Faz, in which he declared that he was not afraid even if it involved personal risks.
Again according to CNN, Papperger is not the only manager targeted by the Russians, but he is part of a list of targets, along with other senior European defense executives.
The action is said to have been disrupted in recent months, when there were several acts of sabotage and arrests in Germany. Two Russian-German spies were also arrested in Bavaria, accused of preparing attacks against electrical infrastructure. Several ministers, from Interior Minister Nancy Faeser to Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, denounced a "hybrid war" waged by Moscow on German soil. Another detail is of interest. According to Spiegel, Russian agents entered Europe with the intention of killing Papperger. "At least one is Russian," Spiegel says, suggesting the others are not. However, this is consistent with recent actions by the Russians in Germany, where local agents are registered to carry out pro-Kremlin actions. The same happened to the spies arrested in Bavaria.
For Moscow, this kind of action in Germany is very easy. There are at least three waves of Russian migration, the first of the so-called Russo-Germans, expelled by Stalin after the end of World War II, who returned with their children and grandchildren to their homeland in the 1990s; then there are those who came to work after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Only the third wave of refugees, those who fled the war in Ukraine, are anti-Putinians and anti-Navalnians. The former are a potential recruitment pool that Russia uses without much scruples.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin has denied a plot to kill Armin Papperger. As Tass reports, according to the spokesman of the Russian presidential office, Dmitry Peskov, "it is very difficult for us to comment on the reports of various media which do not contain any serious arguments. All this presented in the style of another fake news. It is impossible to take such news seriously".
Germany has recently found itself at the center of destabilizing actions. The most famous case is the Tiergarten murder, where a Chechen dissident was killed in the center of Berlin and his killer was arrested almost red-handed. He is a GRU agent whose release in exchange for Navalny was apparently being worked on in the Berlin-Washington-Moscow axis just as Putin's most important opponent died, aged 47, in his cell across the Arctic Circle Arctic. / Adapted 'Pamphlet' from "Correire Della Sera"
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