The Man on Putin’s Kill List Who Outproduced America
How Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger turned a German arms firm into the West’s war engine — and why his factories now terrify the Kremlin more than any battlefield.
The Kremlin has a kill list. Zelensky and Budanov sit at the top. Now, so does Rheinmetall’s CEO, Armin Papperger.
The attempted assassination of Papperger — details of which surfaced in the media in July 2024 — likely occurred earlier, if whispers from European security officials are to be believed. It was U.S. intelligence that uncovered the plot and tipped off Berlin. While German officials downplayed the episode as part of routine state protocols for protecting executives in wartime industries, the scale of the response told another story.
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