Allies of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny have claimed he was killed to stymie a planned prisoner swap involving Vadim Krasikov, a convicted hitman jailed in Germany.
Who is Vadim Krasikov?
Krasikov, 58, a high-ranking colonel in the Russian secret service FSB, is serving a life sentence in a German jail for the 2019 murder of an opponent of the Russian regime in Berlin’s central Tiergarten park.
Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a Georgian-born Chechen dissident registered as an asylum seeker in Germany, was shot dead by bullets from a Glock 26 in broad daylight by Krasikov, who rode a bicycle through the park. Krasikov had entered Germany using false papers.
The assassination led to a diplomatic incident involving the removal of two Russian diplomats from the German capital.
Sentencing Krasikov in 2021, a Berlin court called the killing “state-ordered murder”, a claim that Putin and the Kremlin denied.
Putin alluded to him in his recent interview with Tucker Carlson two weeks ago, in which the Russian leader said the release of the US journalist Evan Gershkovich could be secured in a prison swap involving a man, whom he described as a “patriot” serving a life sentence in a “US allied country” after being convicted of “liquidating a bandit”.
What has Germany said about him?
Reports that the US was requesting German authorities to weigh up whether Krasikov may be able to be part of a prisoner swap, having received indications that Russia was prepared to release two US citizens in exchange for the release of Krasikov, were first raised in summer 2022, but have either been repeatedly denied or dismissed by the German government.
Government representatives have said they would never have seriously considered such a request, citing, among other aspects, the severity of the crime.
They said neither would the US government have had any right to demand the release of a prisoner convicted of murder in Germany, from a German jail.
They have never officially commented on the existence or prospect of such a proposition.
Neither did they respond on Sunday to accusations by Maria Pevchikh, a close ally of Navalny, that US and German negotiating partners, despite frequently stressing the need to help him, had dragged their feet in two-year-long talks with Navalny’s team over his possible release, in plans she said were complete in early 2023.
A German government spokesperson, Christiane Hoffmann, would only say on Monday that while the government had seen the reports about the alleged swap plans, they could not comment on them.
At the time, John Kirby, the US national security spokesperson, confirmed that Russian representatives had made such a request, but rejected the idea that the swapping of two US citizens held hostage by Russia, in exchange for a contract killer in a third country, would ever have been seriously considered.
What was the background?
In 2022, the consideration apparently being discussed was the swapping of Krasikov for the basketball professional Brittney Griner and the former US soldier Paul Whelan, both of whom were imprisoned in Russia.
The possibility of a swap of Krasikov for Navalny was first reported by the Wall Street Journal in September.
Navalny was treated in a Berlin hospital in summer 2020 after being flown to the city for treatment following his poisoning by the nerve agent novichok. He left Berlin for Russia in January 2021 and was arrested on his arrival at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport.
