European financial market infrastructure firm Euroclear, which holds €183 billion in frozen Russian assets, has enlisted the services of bodyguards to protect its top executives against potential threats from Russia […]
Euroclear has hired the French security firm Amarante to safeguard CEO Valérie Urbain and seven other executive board members. The decision, made in late 2024, was driven by multiple factors. One was the news that Russian intelligence officers had been plotting to assassinate Armin Papperger, CEO of the German defense firm Rheinmetall. Another was a December incident that coincided with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Brussels, when an unidentified drone was spotted hovering near Euroclear’s office, which sits on the same street as the headquarters of Belgium’s domestic intelligence service.
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Private citizens hire privatised security service to be safe from attacks by foreign state actors because European states lost control of this war that is already going on? That’s a new one.
I wouldn’t say the CEO of Euroclear is a ‘private citizen’ in this context.
He doesn’t hold any elected office, isn’t a government employee. He can afford the protection but most of us can’t.
Most of us are not exposed to such a threat level. But if so, you can turn to the police and will get special protection. This happens all the time.
I was riffing on how we’re already experiencing terror attacks, especially in the lead-up to various elections, which doesn’t seem to be really acknowledged. I’m fairly sure I won’t have enough time to report threat to my life when some mentally ill person encouraged by FSB drives a car into a crowd. I don’t think we’ve ever seen any real follow up on collateral damage caused by Novichok use in public either.
This is a completely different issue. There are persons who are known to be exposed to a higher personal threat level, and they get special protection. This is different to the alleged higher threat to the general public. As far as I know and read in the press, police forces are on higher alert to protect public spaces, events, etc. But we can’t mixed this up with the individual threat levels of exposed persons and their special protections.
[Edit typo.]