Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said “we are taking very seriously the significantly heightened threat of Russian aggression”.
Earlier this week, a senior Nato official told the BBC that Russia was “engaging in aggressive covert operations across Europe – involving sabotage, arson and assassination plots – aimed at weakening public support for Ukraine”.
The German foreign minister said the Baltic states had already highlighted the various methods deployed by Russia’s Vladimir Putin in his war on Ukraine. As well as sabotage, she spoke of cyberattacks and disrupting GPS signals so that Baltic flights could no longer land in neighbouring countries.
“We have seen that there have been attacks on factories, and that again underlines that, together, we as Europeans must protect ourselves as best we can and not be naive,” Ms Baerbock told reporters.
In early May, a building complex owned by the Diehl Metall firm went up in flames in south-west Berlin. Although a technical fault was blamed for the fire, sabotage has not been ruled out. Suspicious fires have also been reported in Poland and Lithuania.
Last April, Mr Papperger’s garden house was set alight at Hermannsburg in northern Germany, although there has been no evidence of a Russian link.
The fire was quickly brought under control and a rambling, anonymous confession purportedly from leftist militants appeared on activist network Indymedia.
The reported plot against such a high-profile German CEO has prompted widespread alarm.
Leading conservative figure Roderich Kiesewetter said the chancellor should come clean with the German population about how great the threat from Russia really was. German intelligence needed to be boosted to the level of neighbouring countries, he said.
“We must take it very seriously and also prepare ourselves accordingly,” he told public broadcaster ZDF.
Michael Roth, who chairs Germany’s foreign affairs committee told Bild newspaper that Vladimir Putin was waging a “war of extermination not only against Ukraine, but against its supporters and our values”.
The head of the defence committee, Marcus Faber, added his condemnation, saying if information about Russian intelligence involvement came to light, then “the expulsion of diplomats must follow and, if necessary, international arrest warrants must be issued”.