Germany has responded to media reports of an alleged foiled assassination attempt against one of Ukraine's largest arms dealers in Germany.
ADVERTISEMENTBerlin said on Friday that it “won't be intimidated" by Russian attempts to undermine the country's support of Ukraine, but refused to comment on a media report that Moscow planned to assassinate the chief executive of a leading defence company.
CNN reported on Thursday that Russia planned to kill the German CEO of a major military technology and artillery round supplier for Ukraine, Armin Papperger of Rheinmetall, in a plot from earlier this year.
The news channel reported that the US informed Germany, whose security services were able to foil the plot.
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 Putin's regime wants above all to undermine our support for Ukraine in its defence against the Russian war of aggression, but the German government won't be intimidated,” Kall said.
He noted that German security measures have been increased significantly since 2022, and that “the threats range from espionage and sabotage, through cyberattacks, to state terrorism.”
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.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has proved to be a major boon for Papperger, who reported in 2023 the shares for his arms company Rheinmetall was experiencing a 134-year high from moving large amounts of arms to the battlefield.
Series of assassination attempts
CNN reported that the alleged Papperger plot was one of a series of Russian plans to kill defence industry executives across Europe supporting the Ukrainian war effort.
In April, German investigators arrested two German-Russian men on suspicion of espionage. One was accused of agreeing to carry out attacks on potential targets including US military facilities in hopes of sabotaging aid for Ukraine.
Germany has become the second-biggest supplier of weapons to Ukraine after the US since Russia started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago.