Russian military intelligence is plotting to kill European arms executives, from chief executives at major manufacturers to managers at small drone makers, to cut off weapons supplies to Ukraine, officials from five European intelligence agencies told the Financial Times on 11 October 2026. Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, has advised senior staff at defence contractors to hire private close-protection teams. Two suspects were arrested this year on federal warrants alleging they spied for a Russian intelligence service on a Bavarian drone supplier, whom German media have since named as Donaustahl founder Stefan Thumann.
BfV president Sinan Selen told German lawmakers that Russian state actors and actors under state control were planning violence against individuals. He said the agency was seeing changes in the targets, the methods and the people involved, including the use of organised crime structures.
YAC News found no public response from the Russian government to the Financial Times report as of 11 October 2026. When CNN reported a plot against Rheinmetall chief executive Armin Papperger in July 2024, Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, said it was hard to comment on media reports that rested on anonymous sources and offered no serious arguments, according to the TASS news agency.
Targets and methods
Officials from the five agencies said killing civilians in Europe, once off-limits even inside Russian intelligence, has become a growing part of Russian state planning. Targets include chief executives and senior staff at major arms makers and managers at smaller firms building drones and drone components, they said. Small drone makers may be especially exposed because the cost of protection weighs heavily on their budgets, the newspaper reported.
Western intelligence assessments place the plots with the GRU, Russia's military intelligence directorate. Officials said GRU officers now work more closely with organised crime groups and cross-border agent networks. They split surveillance, logistics, planning and execution among separate cells or individuals in several countries instead of relying on lone recruits hired online for cash, the officials said.
Security services have disrupted several plots before anyone acted, the officials said. In other cases security teams found executives being watched at their homes and workplaces. The Financial Times did not say how many plots had been stopped, and officials did not name most of the people now under protection.
Several defence executives, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Financial Times they had upgraded personal security over the past six months on intelligence-agency advice. Some companies have moved production sites, the newspaper reported.
One intelligence official said intimidation was the aim: "The main goal from the Russian perspective is still psychological." Executives are meant to think twice before doing business with Ukraine, the official said. Another official said many Russian efforts remain amateurish and easy to counter.
Sources contacted by the Italian news agency ANSA said Italy had received no specific warning through diplomatic, military or intelligence channels about the plans the Financial Times described, Il Sole 24 Ore reported.
The Donaustahl case
Stefan Thumann, 39, founded Donaustahl in 2019. The Bavarian start-up has supplied kamikaze and reconnaissance drones to Ukraine and now concentrates on drone components, according to Die Zeit and Der Spiegel. Die Zeit reported on 5 August 2026 that German security officials believed Russian intelligence had been preparing to kill him.
A foreign partner agency warned German intelligence in December 2025 that Thumann was probably in serious danger, Die Zeit reported. Thumann has been under police protection since then and has cancelled public appearances. He told Stern and RTL that he was effectively living underground.
Sergey N., a 43-year-old Ukrainian from the Kharkiv region, began watching the target in December 2025 on behalf of a Russian intelligence service, gathering information online and filming his workplace, federal prosecutors said. Die Zeit reported that he photographed the entrance to Thumann's home in Lower Bavaria and was briefly detained by Bavarian officers. He was released before investigators could finish analysing his phones and moved to Spain with his family, the newspaper reported.
Alla S., a 45-year-old Romanian, took over the surveillance by March 2026 at the latest and filmed the target's registered home address on her phone, prosecutors said. Investigators also found possible attempts to watch Thumann's father in Starnberg to learn where his son was staying, Die Zeit reported.
Spanish authorities detained Sergey N. in Elda, near Alicante, in mid-February on a European arrest warrant, the German newspaper taz reported. Police special forces from North Rhine-Westphalia and officers of the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office arrested Alla S. in Rheine on 24 March. Federal prosecutors, who said the surveillance was probably meant to prepare further intelligence activity against the target, worked on the case with the BfV and sought Sergey N.'s extradition from Spain. The suspects' lawyers had not commented, according to t-online.
Die Zeit reported that neither suspect was a trained intelligence officer and that investigators believed Russian services had recruited both online as single-use agents, with any attackers to be hired separately. The newspaper also reported that a second German defence executive was under threat, with details classified.
The 2024 Rheinmetall plot
US intelligence learned in early 2024 of a Russian government plan to kill Papperger, whose company makes artillery shells and military vehicles for Ukraine, and warned German authorities, who protected him, CNN reported on 11 July 2024, citing five US and Western officials. The officials said it was the most advanced of several plans against European defence executives.
Suspects from former Soviet states, at least one of them Russian, had been near Rheinmetall's Düsseldorf headquarters and at Papperger's destinations abroad, but the evidence was too thin for arrests, Der Spiegel reported at the time. Der Spiegel linked the plot to Rheinmetall's plan to build a tank factory in Ukraine. Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev had already said Russia would strike any Rheinmetall facility set up in Ukraine.
James Appathurai, NATO's deputy assistant secretary general for innovation, hybrid and cyber, told a European Parliament committee on 28 January 2025 that sabotage in NATO states had included plots to kill industry leaders such as the head of Rheinmetall, and that there had been other plots as well. Politico reported it was the first public confirmation by a senior NATO, German or US official. Appathurai said Russian services recruited online through criminal groups, unwitting young people and migrants.
Papperger told the Baltic News Service in 2025 that Russia targeted him because Rheinmetall, by his description the world's largest maker of large-calibre ammunition, helps Western countries defend themselves. Police provide his security, he said.
European response
Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the Soviet Union ratified in 1973 and Russia inherited, protects the right to life against arbitrary killing by a state.
EU foreign ministers meet on 12 October, where Sweden, Poland and Estonia plan to press for tighter Schengen visa rules for Russian tourists and limits on travel by accredited Russian diplomats, Kyiv Post reported. EU diplomats told European Pravda the discussion on diplomats' movement would only test political support, with no decision expected. Russian diplomats have had to notify member states before travelling outside their host country since 25 January 2026 under the EU's 19th sanctions package.
EU visa officials are due on 14 October to discuss a German proposal for a common restrictive approach to visas for Russian citizens, European Pravda reported. The European Commission aims to present a visa package in January, according to Kyiv Post. Schengen states issued 477,878 tourist visas to Russian citizens in 2025, according to figures cited by 11 governments in a joint letter in June.
Estonia has proposed an EU-wide entry ban on about 650,000 former Russian combatants, saying people with military training could be recruited by Russian intelligence for sabotage. Estonian interior minister Igor Taro said in June that Estonia had already barred 2,000 former combatants.
