Russia has filed a €47.2 million ($54.8 million) lawsuit against the company arming Ukraine, Romania, and most of NATO. The defendant, German arms giant Rheinmetall, has nearly tripled its order backlog since Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The contract Moscow now wants money over was killed in 2014 by Russia’s own annexation of Crimea. Russian lawyers handling the case openly admit there is nothing to collect.
The filing landed the day after Rheinmetall announced its largest international contract in recent company history.
Russia’s military prosecutor and a Defense Ministry-owned holding company filed the suit jointly in a Moscow arbitration court, Russian outlet RBC reported on 3 June 2026. The filing landed the day after Rheinmetall announced its largest international contract in recent company history—€5.7 billion ($6.6 billion) from Romania.
The same day Romania’s deal was announced, the company said it would open an armored vehicle plant in western Ukraine within 12 weeks. In 2015, Russia’s Defense Ministry sued Rheinmetall in Switzerland over the same broken contract. It walked away with nothing.
Where Russian troops trained for Ukraine
The contract dates to June 2011. Rheinmetall agreed to build a combat training center for Russia’s Ground Forces in Mulino, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast. The facility was modeled on the Bundeswehr’s Schnöggersburg training town in Saxony-Anhalt.
It was meant to put 30,000 Russian soldiers a year through laser-based simulated combat, including urban warfare. The construction deal was worth around €100 million ($116 million), according to a joint CORRECTIV and Welt am Sonntag investigation.
In September 2021, Putin personally watched the final phase of the Russian-Belarusian Zapad-2021 exercises at the same training center.
The same investigation reported that Bremen prosecutors had probed two Rheinmetall managers over an alleged €5.38 million ($6.2 million) bribery scheme. The money was reportedly routed through a shell company to recipients in Russia to win the deal. Charges were dropped in 2020, with fines totaling €12,000 ($14,000).
Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. Germany revoked Rheinmetall’s export license that August. Russian state contractor Garnizon finished the Mulino center without German help.
In September 2021, Putin personally watched the final phase of the Russian-Belarusian Zapad-2021 exercises at the same training center—six months before he ordered the invasion of Ukraine. Putin’s troops, CORRECTIV concluded, may well have rehearsed at the German-built center for what came next.
In September 2025, Mulino hosted Zapad-2025 with another 100,000 troops.
A theatrical lawsuit
The new claim, filed by Moscow’s military prosecutor’s office with Garnizon, rests on a different legal theory than the penalty case Switzerland rejected. It demands the money as “unjust enrichment” under Russian civil law. The case is being heard behind closed doors in the Moscow Arbitration Court. Prosecutors cite risk to “service secret” information.
Disputes like this “traditionally face the problem of the absence of significant assets” on Russian territory.
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Two of Russia’s top commercial-litigation firms told RBC the same thing. Disputes like this “traditionally face the problem of the absence of significant assets” on Russian territory, Alexei Stankevich of Orchards said. Rimma Fatykhova of ANP Zenit added that the value lies not in payment but in “fixing the claims” on paper.
She pointed to a pattern: Russian courts froze about $488 million of German industrial-gas company Linde’s Russian assets after it walked out of a sanctioned project. Rheinmetall, unlike Linde, has nothing left in Russia to seize.
Who Rheinmetall is now
The company Russia is dragging into a closed Moscow courtroom has become Europe’s largest arms supplier in the war Russia is fighting. Rheinmetall booked around €26 billion ($30.2 billion) in contracted work before the 2022 invasion. By the end of March 2026, that figure reached a record €73 billion ($84.7 billion), per its own quarterly report.
Inside Ukraine, only one Rheinmetall plant is operational so far—a vehicle-repair facility. But CEO Armin Papperger told CNN on 2 June 2026 that an armored vehicle plant in western Ukraine will open within 12 weeks.
The Moscow Arbitration Court will hear the case behind closed doors.
A planned ammunition plant announced two years ago has run into delays and a site change, and remains unbuilt. In 2024, US and German intelligence reportedly foiled an assassination plot against Papperger. NATO officials called it part of a broader Russian sabotage campaign against European defense executives supplying Ukraine.
Russia originally demanded a penalty from Rheinmetall in 2014 because the company stopped arming the Russian military. Twelve years later, Moscow is back in court against a company arming nearly everyone Russia might one day fight. The Moscow Arbitration Court will hear the case behind closed doors. Whatever it decides, no German court will enforce it. The Russian lawyers handling the case already know.
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