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bne August 2024 Eastern Europe I 49
US and Germany foil Russian assassination plot targeting Rheinmetall CEO
bne IntelliNews
The United States and Germany have successfully thwarted a Russian plot to assassinate Armin Papperger, the CEO of Rheinmetall, a prominent German arms manufacturer, CNN has reported.
Rheinmetall is one of the world's leading producers of artillery and tank shells. Since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Rheinmetall has been instrumental in supplying shells and vehicles to Ukraine, greatly enhancing Kyiv's capabilities to defend itself against Russian aggression. The company also plans to open an armoured vehicle plant in Ukraine.
American intelligence uncovered the assassination plot earlier in 2024, according to five unnamed sources described as "US and Western officials familiar with the episode." According to CNN, the plan was not standalone;
it was part of a broader Russian campaign targeting defence industry executives across Europe who support Ukraine. The American outlet reported that the plan to kill Papperger was the "most mature" among these schemes.
Upon learning of the assassination attempt, US intelligence alerted German authorities. In response, German security services swiftly implemented protective measures for Papperger, successfully neutralising the threat.
“A high-level German government official confirmed that Berlin was warned about the plot by the US,” the CNN report states.
This report is just the latest example of Russia’s campaign to undermine Europe through the use of local agents to carry out arson, vandalism and other disruptive activities aimed at hindering the delivery of Western arms to Ukraine and diminishing support for Kyiv.
Earlier in the week, CNN reported that Russia has been conducting a "bold" sabotage operation for over six months. According to a senior unnamed Nato official, these operations target both the weapon supply lines to Ukraine and the key decision-makers involved in the process.
this negatively impacting its interests and reputation,” the declaration stated, specifically pointing to China’s “large- scale support for Russia’s defence industrial base,” the NYT reports.
While the declaration did not detail
any specific repercussions, the threat of economic sanctions has long hung over Beijing, which has been careful to avoid bringing down sanctions on its banks and companies that could harm its $1 trillion of annual exports to the collective West. China is much more exposed to trade with the West than Russia, which was easily able to reorientate its commodity- dominated exports to new markets
in Asia after extreme sanctions were imposed in 2022.
However, imposing trade sanctions on China is likely to have an even more extreme boomerang effect on Europe than those imposed on Russia has
had as China is a major export market for European goods in particular. For example, Germany is heavily dependent on the Chinese market for high-end cars and luxury goods exports.
China has joined Russian President Vladimir Putin in opposing what they call the “unipolar hegemony of the US” and called for a multipolar global set up that could be overseen by bodies like the UN. Putin and Chinese President
Xi Jinping declared a “partnership without limits” during a three-day trip to Moscow in March 2023 that was
an open act of defiance of Western criticism of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and openly positioned China as in conflict with the West for the first time.
Putin followed that visit up with his own trip to Beijing in May where he held in-depth wide-ranging talks with Xi on their joint response to sanctions and the US-led attempts to limit their partnership. In a sign of Russia’s growing closeness to China, Xi gave Putin a bear hug at their first meeting, a very unusual gesture in Chinese diplomacy.
In another sign of the growing multinational dimension to the BRICS countries' cooperation and defiance of
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