On August 23, a man by the name of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili headed to a mosque through a park in central Berlin to attend Friday prayers. He wasn't able to make it. Khangoshvili was shot three times, once in the shoulder and once in the head.
The assassin wore a wig and sped up to his victim on a bike. His low-rent disguise, bike, handgun, and quick change of clothes caught the attention of onlookers, who called the police.
The 56-year-old man who for months would only be known as "Vadim Sokolov" was quickly arrested. Vadim Krasikov was his actual name. He is currently serving a life sentence in Germany.
This convicted assassin was proposed as part of a dual trade by the Russian government. A convicted international arms dealer who had served 14 years of a 25-year sentence for conspiracy to kill Americans and providing aid to a designated foreign terrorist organization was exchanged for a basketball player. According to CNN, the U.S. could not persuade Germany to give up Krasikov, the man accused of espionage for the U.S.
When he isn't in our custody, how can we get involved? John Kirby told ABC on Sunday that Krasikov was not on the council's radar.
Commentators have remarked on the stark difference between a democracy's willingness to trade the "merchant of death" as Bout was known, for an athlete railroaded on the pretext of cannabis possession. The brutality of Krasikov's crime and the heroism of his victim made the exchange disproportionate. Khangoshvili was a Chechen dissident who helped Georgia and the US in their counterterrorism efforts, and faced threats against his life as a result.
There were a number of things that stood out to forensic sleuths. There was no one with his name or particulars in the Russian government database prior to 2019. Krasikov was wanted by Russian law enforcement for the suspected murder of a businessman in the country.
A domestic arrest warrant had been issued by the court. In the same way Khangoshvili was slain, Krasikov was caught on camera approaching the man on a bike and shooting him at point blank range.
Krasikov was taken off the domestic and international wanted lists in the summer of 2015. According to the London-based Dossier Center, Vadim Sokolov was born in the form of an internal Russian passport with an unusual number sequence. Photographs of Krasikov in his private life and the arrested Berlin shooter were very similar.
Bellingcat found that before he traveled to Berlin via Paris and Warsaw, he had been in contact with former operatives from the Russian Federal Security Service. According to court records reviewed by Bellingcat, it was highly likely that Krasikov was a member of the Vympel Spetsnaz unit, a special forces team formed in 1981 that had a focus on covert operations. Vympel had a focus on counterterrorism after the fall of the Soviet Union. The units were in both wars.
Prosecutors in Germany believed that Krasikov was a former colonel in the Russian special services. Krasikov was found guilty of Khangoshvili's murder and sentenced to life in prison. Two Russian spies were expelled by Berlin after the verdict. The presiding judge stated at the hearing that the state organs of the Russian Federation decided to liquidate the Berlin store.
The legal team for Krasikov said he was innocent of any crime. Aggressive victimhood and special pleading were part of the Russian Foreign Ministry's response. Russian President Vladimir Putin had not tried to hide his approval of the motive for Khangoshvili's assassination, calling the victim a "cruel and bloodthirsty person" in comments at a summit in Paris, before claiming that he was one of the organizers.
Khangoshvili was an asset to both Georgia and the U.S.
The leader of the Chechen militia against the Russian army was born in Georgia and grew up in the Pankisi Gorge. Chechnya is a Muslim-majority state in Southern Russia that borders Georgia. The Georgian Interior Ministry relied on Khangoshvili to help stamp out such activity for six years, despite the fact that he was branded an Islamic terrorist by the Kremlin.
The case officer for Khangoshvili was a former official in Georgia's interior ministry. I reported for the Daily Beast that Khangoshvili provided information to the Georgian government that helped them in their fight against the U.S. based group. According to Levan, Khangoshvili was paid for his services by the CIA station in Georgia.
The so-called Lopata Gorge incident took place in 2012 and Khangoshvili was involved. Russian nationals, along with 17 other armed Islamists, tried to cross the border from Georgia into Russian Federation territory. Four years after Russia invaded Georgia, a crisis with Moscow could have arisen. At the end of the affair, 14 people were killed, three of them on the government's side. After the militant group threatened to take Levan hostage, Khangoshivili saved his own handler's life. Georgian special forces opened fire on them after Khangoshvili tricked them into going into a trap.
His role in disrupting the Russian special services operations on Georgian soil was even more consequential because he was able to foil attempts by the agents of Ramzan Kadyrov to recruit Georgian Chechens. He brought a Georgian who was recruited by the Russians. The man surrendered to our authorities. The person rendered his services to Georgia. He became a double agent after being introduced to the person by the person. This may have given the Kremlin the motivation to eliminate him.
Levan said that Khangoshvili was the target of two assassination attempts. A South Ossetian hitman had second thoughts and turned himself into the government. The assassin had a criminal record in Russia and was recruited by the Kremlin's security services. The interior ministry told Khangoshvili that it had stopped the plan to kill him. Soon afterwards, he began to spy for Georgia.
Georgia's president lost reelection to Georgian Dream in 2012 and that ended the relationship. Khangoshvili stopped at a traffic light three years ago. He was hit in the arm by some of the bullets fired at him. He was injured and went to a hospital. According to the Human Rights and Monitoring Center, the state's inquiry into Khangoshvili's attempted murder was flawed. There are cameras on the street.
Realizing that he was no longer safe in his homeland, Khangoshvili decided to emigrate first to Ukraine, then to Poland and finally to Germany, where he settled. He was in the middle of trying to get asylum when Krasikov succeeded.
Khangoshvili was staying at a hotel across the street from the headquarters of the BND when he was killed. Berlin's establishment was embarrassed by the assassination of a dissident. After Khangoshvili was killed, he was portrayed in the German press and by members of the German government as a "jihadist," someone who had been the target of an internecine Chechen clan war. The opposition criticized the Georgian government for not commenting on the elimination of a prized intelligence asset.
The senior fellow at the European Values Center for Security Policy, a German specialist in information warfare, accused the German government of trying to shift blame from Moscow to its victim. German officials and some journalists went out of their way to portray Zelimkhan Khangoshvili as a dangerous jihadist, almost to the letter of the misinformation conveyed by Kremlin-affiliated sources.
There were attempts to link Khangoshvili to terrorist acts by showing pictures of him as a young fighter. The truth could not have been further from this. Khangoshvili was not an Extremist or a Terrorist. He had a modern lifestyle and Georgian heritage.
Krasikov is seen as a Russian worth bartering over.
The leader of the European Georgia party, and former secretary of the National Security Council under former president Saakashvili, told Yahoo News that Russia is trying to liberate the murderer. The Georgian Dream government's silence about the death of a Georgian security agent who helped protect his country from Russia means that he was an accessory in the murder.
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