Putin wants Berlin assassin Vadim Krasikov, but prisoner swap is murky - BBC News

How Russia is weaponising the murky world of 'hostage diplomacy' and Germany is caught in the middle.

1 day agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, BellingcatImage caption, A court found Vadim Krasikov was acting under Kremlin orders when he executed a Chechan separatist in Berlin in 2019.By Jake LaphamBBC NewsIt is now one year since American journalist Evan Gershkovich was detained on a reporting trip in Russia. His best hope of release may be Vadim Krasikov, who is sitting in a German jail, convicted of an execution that was ordered by the Kremlin.

In the summer of 2013, a Moscow restaurant owner was gunned down in the Russian capital. A hooded man jumped off a bike and shot his victim twice before fleeing.

Six years later, an exiled Chechen commander, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, was murdered in a busy Berlin park in eerily similar circumstances, shot by a man on a bike with a silenced Glock 26 in broad daylight.

The assailant was arrested after dumping a pistol and wig in the River Spree close to the Reichstag, the building housing the German parliament.

A passport bearing the name "Vadim Sokolov" was found on the Berlin assassin, but authorities quickly concluded that was not his name after all.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-68555627

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