Vladimir Putin’s ‘Assassination’ Strategy Should Have the West Worried

The attempt on Donald Trump’s life is morally heinous and politically unacceptable,  but it serves to remind Americans of the fragile nature of democracy and the civic institutions that underpin it. Americans need to be mindful of the fact that democracy works only if political extremism on both left and right and political violence is rejected as a matter of principle.

The failed assassination should also remind us that state-directed assassination is business as usual for Russia’s self-elected president, Vladimir Putin. For it was just a few days before the attempt on Trump’s life that CNN broke a sensational story: “US intelligence discovered earlier this year that the Russian government planned to assassinate the chief executive of a powerful German arms manufacturer that has been producing artillery shells and military vehicles for Ukraine, according to five US and western officials familiar with the episode.”

The arms manufacturer in question was Armin Papperger, the CEO of Rheinmetall. But he wasn’t the only target of Russian assassins. “The plot was one of a series of Russian plans to assassinate defense industry executives across Europe who were supporting Ukraine’s war effort.”

Since “wet works” are the purview of the KGB’s successor, the FSB, and since Putin is a career KGB officer, we can be pretty certain that the assassinations were possibly planned and certainly overseen by him. The syllogism is persuasive, but unsurprising. We would expect nothing less from a man who ordered the killings of a score of political opponents, constructed a bona fide fascist system that glorifies violence, and unleashed a genocidal war against Ukraine.

What is surprising is the fact that the plot was uncovered by the CIA and neutralized by the German spy agency, the BND. That’s testimony both to the Agency’s competence and the FSB’s and Putin’s incompetence. Putin must know that the Soviet security services excelled in wet works, whether they involved killing Russian monarchists, Ukrainian nationalists, or Trotskyists. Papperger’s good luck is thus Putin’s bad luck. Russia’s supreme leader must be wondering what went wrong and who was at fault. And he must be searching for a fall guy: after all, a man of genius couldn’t possibly get something as simple as an assassination of a businessman wrong. The failure is embarrassing. Heads will roll.

Failing at killing a businessman—something the ragtag Baader-Meinhof Gang pulled off several times—is bad enough. But what really takes the cake is Putin’s blithe willingness to outrage the one country, Germany, that had been soft on Russia and Putin before his invasion of Ukraine and that retains a residual hope that Russia, Ukraine, and Europe can somehow work things out and become pals again. Germany matters—to the European Union, NATO, Ukraine, and Russia. The smart thing for Putin to do would be to court Germany, and especially its Socialists, who have historically been prone to serve as Russia’s apologists {Russlandversteher), and not alienate it and them even more.

Equally inane is Putin’s presumed belief that killing a businessman would affect Rheinmetall’s supply of weapons to Ukraine. The company won’t just halt production simply because its CEO was assassinated or fell ill or died of natural causes.

If Putin truly believed that killing Papperger could possibly have positive consequences for Russia, then it’s hard not to conclude that his ignorance of the ways of the world is astounding. President Joe Biden has come under attack for having diminished cognitive powers, but forgetfulness and slurring of words are nothing in comparison to Putin’s almost complete detachment from the real world.

Small wonder that he doesn’t see that Russia is suffering from exceptionally high inflation, that modernization has been a dead letter for many decades, that its bad weather funds are running out, that Russia’s relationship with China is purely colonial, and that it can’t win the war against Ukraine.

In Putin’s make-believe world, everything he desires must come to pass—reality be damned. That makes him pathetic, stubborn, and dangerous. Since he’s clearly incapable of learning from his blunders, he will continue to repeat them in the merry supposition that everything will work out exactly as he imagines. German businesspeople would be advised to beef up their security: Putin and his killers will be back.

Meanwhile, Americans should condemn Putin and Trump’s would-be killer with equal vehemence and remind themselves that Russian-style violence dare not become business as usual in their country.

About the Author: Dr. Alexander Motyl

Dr. Alexander Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia, and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires, and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, including Pidsumky imperii (2009); Puti imperii (2004); Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires (2001); Revolutions, Nations, Empires: Conceptual Limits and Theoretical Possibilities (1999); Dilemmas of Independence: Ukraine after Totalitarianism (1993); and The Turn to the Right: The Ideological Origins and Development of Ukrainian Nationalism, 1919–1929 (1980); the editor of 15 volumes, including The Encyclopedia of Nationalism (2000) and The Holodomor Reader (2012); and a contributor of dozens of articles to academic and policy journals, newspaper op-ed pages, and magazines. He also has a weekly blog, “Ukraine’s Orange Blues.”