Russian national Vadim Krasikov, convicted in Germany of killing former Georgian security operative and military Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in Berlin in 2019 on the orders of the Russian state, has been sent back to Russia amid a major prisoner swap between Russia and the West.
Krasikov was greeted at the airport by Vladimir Putin himself.
On the same day, Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov admitted Krasikov was an FSB officer.
“Krasikov is an FSB employee,” he said.
Moscow had earlier demanded to swap Krasikov for Brittney Greiner, an American female basketball player who was later swapped for convicted international arms dealer Viktor Bout sentenced to 25 years in US jail.
Maria Pevchikh, the head of the passed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny's anti-corruption campaign, had said in February 2024 that talks to swap Mr. Navalny for Vadim Krasikov were in their final stage. According to Pevchikh, Vladimir Putin did not want Navalny to be released and killed him at the final stage of the negotiations.
Zelimkhan Khangoshvili was a Georgian national from Pankisi and a security operative. He fought in the second Chechen war against Russia, but returned to Georgia in 2004 and joined the Georgian Army and served as an operative in Georgia’s security services.
He reportedly worked both against Islamic fundamentalism and Russian netowkrs in Georgia and was part of the US-Georgian security cooperation.
Khangoshvili left Georgia in 2015 after being wounded in an assassination attempt in downtown Tbilisi. Khangoshvili had later said that Georgian Dream authorities refused to investigate the shooting - which he had claimed was organised by Russia - took away his gun licence and told him to leave Georgia.
During the court proceedings, the German Federal Prosecution Service said Khangoshvili had left Georgia because of its “pro-Russian government.”
The Georgian government had maintained complete silence on the murder of its own citizen and former security officer, which shook a major European capital, and made no statement following the prisoner exchange that freed Russia's prominent FSB agent.
Khangoshvili’s own family expressed disdain over the fact that it was not consulted in the context of the swap.
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