Vadim Krasikov, a Russian citizen released from a German prison on Friday in a prisoner swap between Moscow and the West, was convicted of killing a former Chechen militant in 2019 as he walked in broad daylight in a park in central Berlin.
The brazen killing, carried out just a minute’s walk from parliament and then-Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office, has sparked outrage in Germany, complicating efforts to replace the man with political prisoners the West wants freed from Russian jails.
The judge called the killing of Georgian citizen Zelimkhan Khangoshvili “state terrorism” and said the order almost certainly came from Putin himself.
The evidence he presented for Russian state involvement included his official Russian papers, which falsely identified him, and the fact that Russian law gives Putin the power to order the killing of state enemies abroad.
The three shots fired from a Glock pistol on a sunny August day were considered murder “with particularly aggravating circumstances” – the most severe punishment possible under German law.
The judge said what was particularly worrying was that Khangoshvili had long ago distanced himself from any violent struggle for Chechen independence.
“This was not an act of self-defence by Russia. It was nothing but state terrorism,” he said. “Four children lost their father, two siblings lost their brother.”
Krasikov was born in 1965 in Kazakhstan, which was then part of the Soviet Union, and police photos show him with deep, narrow eyes and a mournful expression. He worked for Russia’s FSB state security service, where, according to open source investigators Bellingcat, he became an expert killer.
Krasikov’s conviction in December 2021 saw the expulsion of two of the 101 diplomats serving at Russia’s sprawling Berlin embassy. Their number has been reduced by 50 since Russia’s full-blown invasion of Ukraine.
He had entered Germany via France with false papers under the name Vadim Sokolov. He was arrested just minutes after cycling past Khangoshvili and shooting him; passersby saw him change his clothes, shave off his beard, and dump his bicycle in a pond and reported it to the police.
While Krasikov has pleaded innocent and said he is actually Sokolov, a construction engineer from St Petersburg who came to Berlin as a tourist, Putin has implicitly acknowledged his identity and profession. Last year, without naming Krasikov, he spoke of his desire to ensure the release of someone who had “eliminated a bandit in a capital of Europe”.
Investigators identified Krasikov with the help of Ukrainian security services, who viewed footage of a man with similar tattoos – what appeared to be a demon wearing a crown and snakes – at his second wedding to a woman in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv in 2010.
Throughout his trial, he pretended not to recognize the court, and when witnesses against him were heard, he would often take off his headset to deliver a lecture.
It is legally complicated for Germany to release him, especially given the severity of the crime.
Experts have suggested he could be released under an agreement in principle that he serve his sentence in Russia, even if the Kremlin wants to reconsider. Alternatively, prosecutors could say they no longer want to see his sentence implemented.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
