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https://www.wsj.com/world/putin-wants-his-hit-man-back-5bd759f8

 1. WSJ News Exclusive


PUTIN WANTS HIS HIT MAN BACK


MOSCOW SEEKS THE RETURN OF A COVERT OPERATIVE SERVING A LIFE SENTENCE IN
GERMANY, POSSIBLY IN EXCHANGE FOR WALL STREET JOURNAL REPORTER EVAN GERSHKOVICH
AND OTHERS HELD BY RUSSIA


Berlin police photo of Vadim Krasikov. BERLIN POLICE
By Bojan Pancevski

and Alan Cullison

Sept. 10, 2023 12:01 am ET
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BERLIN—Russian assassin Vadim Krasikov, riding a bicycle, followed his target to
a crowded children’s playground at lunchtime, a popular summer spot in a
central-city park filled with families and workers. 

As the man entered Tiergarten park, Krasikov pedaled close behind. Not far from
the swings, he pulled a pistol from a rucksack and shot him in the back, leaving
his victim, a former Chechen insurgent leader, slumped on the ground. Krasikov
got off his bike and calmly fired twice into the man’s head, watched by children
and parents, witnesses said during a court trial that ended in his conviction.

The 2019 murder of Zemlikhan Khangoshvili, a man who Moscow alleged led a 2004
attack in Russia, was determined by a German court to be an intentionally brutal
message by Russia to its enemies abroad: Even if you seek refuge in the West, we
will hunt you down.

Shortly before the 2021 verdict, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his
top security adviser, Nikolai Patrushev, to explore a prisoner swap to free
Krasikov, said a former European official with connections to senior Russian
government figures. That underscored the high value placed on Krasikov by Putin,
a former KGB officer who later headed its successor agency, the Federal Security
Service, or FSB.

Moscow has since brought up Krasikov’s case in prisoner-swap negotiations,
according to Western officials. The officials said Krasikov is central to U.S.
efforts to win the release of people held by Russia, possibly including U.S.
Marine veteran Paul Whelan and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.
Gershkovich, a 31-year-old U.S. citizen, was detained on March 29 by the FSB
while he was on a reporting assignment. He is being held on a charge of
espionage, which Gershkovich, the Journal and U.S. officials deny.

A top Western official involved in hostage diplomacy with Russia said Putin was
interested in trading only for Krasikov. Putin has sought the return of agents
arrested during other clandestine operations abroad. In 2004, he thanked the
Emir of Qatar for returning two men convicted there of planting a car bomb that
killed a fugitive Chechen rebel leader. Russia denied responsibility for the
killing.

Officials in several countries said a multilateral deal to swap Russian
detainees in Western countries for Western citizens held in Russia, as well as
imprisoned dissidents such as Alexei Navalny, was possible. 

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Forensic experts gathering evidence at the spot where Zemlikhan Khangoshvili was
killed in Berlin on Aug. 23, 2019. Photo: christoph soeder/Agence
France-Presse/Getty Images

President Biden said in July that he was serious about pursuing a prisoner
exchange for Gershkovich with the Kremlin but gave no details. Deputy Foreign
Minister Sergei Ryabkov said in April that Russia would contemplate a swap only
after a verdict in the Gershkovich case. Berlin hasn’t said whether it would
consider exchanging Krasikov. Such a swap could face obstacles in Germany, where
government lawyers issued a legal opinion last year that said a convicted
murderer can’t be traded.

Any talks involving Krasikov would be sensitive and unpredictable, said Western
officials, given the seriousness of his crime. The German court ruled that the
Russian state had commissioned the murder, which was carried out at midday in a
park near the office of the German chancellor.

With Khangoshvili lying dead near the children’s playground, the assassin hopped
on his bike and pedaled away. He stopped at the nearby Spree river, changed out
of his clothes and peeled off a wig, revealing a bald head. He hurled his
disguise, bicycle, pistol and silencer into the water. Then, he shaved off part
of his beard with an electric razor.

Two passersby watched him and called the police. Minutes later, Krasikov was
arrested as he tried to mount an electric scooter. Police retrieved the tossed
items, which carried his fingerprints and DNA evidence. 

German prosecutors had their man, but for two years they couldn’t prove who he
was.

Krasikov, now 58 years old, told authorities his name was Vadim Sokolov, a
tourist with no connection to the Russian government. He had a Russian passport
identifying him as Sokolov. He told interrogators that he was in Berlin to visit
his lover, a married woman. The Russian embassy in Berlin said he was Vadim
Sokolov, not Vadim Krasikov. 

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When his murder trial opened in October 2020, Krasikov stuck to his story. With
the help of police in Kyiv and the investigative platform Bellingcat, German
prosecutors eventually confirmed his identity as a veteran of Russian covert
operations. Prosecutors said Krasikov was likely working with the secretive
Vympel department of the FSB, renamed V, which specializes in clandestine
operations abroad. 


Demonstrators in September 2019 holding photos of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in
front of the German embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia. Photo: ZURAB
KURTSIKIDZE/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK

Krasikov denied both killing Khangoshvili and working for Russian security
services. Asked by a judge if he had anything to tell the court before his
conviction, he said, “No, thank you.” A German court found him guilty of murder
in December 2021, describing the fatal shooting as an act of state terrorism. He
was sentenced to life in prison.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said the guilty verdict was politically motivated and
the allegation that Moscow was behind the killing was concocted by Western
intelligence services. “We insist that our citizen is innocent,” the foreign
ministry said in a statement after the verdict. The ministry also said at the
time that the convicted man was Sokolov, not Krasikov.

Russia’s embassy to Berlin declined to comment for this article and referred to
the statement by the foreign ministry, which didn’t respond to a request to
comment.

This account of the case is based on court files and interviews with
acquaintances and relatives of Krasikov, as well as European and U.S. officials
and people familiar with the murder investigation.


PORSCHES, BMWS

Krasikov was born in the village of Kenestobe, in a region of Kazakhstan known
for cattle farming and lead mining. He served in the Soviet army during its war
in Afghanistan. He later joined elite military units in Russia’s Interior
Ministry and the FSB, the country’s main domestic intelligence agency, according
to his brother-in-law, who testified for the prosecution at the trial.

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An undated photo of Vadim Krasikov obtained by German authorities.

Krasikov was married twice, the second time to Kateryna Krasikova, a woman from
Kharkiv, a city in northeastern Ukraine. He told his wife’s family that he
worked for Russian security services but gave few specifics, the brother-in-law,
Aleksandr Vodorez, said in an interview. 

Photographs from Krasikov’s July 2010 wedding in Moscow that were in court files
show FSB officers among the guests on the bank of the Moskva River. He and his
second wife lived in an upscale Moscow apartment, and his wife told her family
that he earned about $10,000 a month, plus bonuses for what he called business
trips, which sometimes lasted weeks, Vodorez said.

Krasikov often wore designer clothes and took vacations on the Mediterranean,
Vodorez said. Krasikov’s wife complained to relatives that he traded his luxury
cars so frequently—Porsches and BMWs—that she never had enough time to get used
to them, Vodorez said.

Krasikov, who compulsively washed his hands, once bragged about meeting Putin at
an elite military training facility, Vodorez said. Putin, Krasikov told him,
“shoots well,” he recalled.

German prosecutors obtained surveillance-camera footage from 2013 that showed a
man they identified as Krasikov killing a Russian businessman, an attack that
mirrored Khangoshvili’s slaying. The video shows Albert Nazranov, the owner of
businesses in the Caucasian Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, walking and then
running in Moscow from a man approaching him on a bicycle. Nazranov collapses
after being shot in the back and head.


A photo of Vadim Krasikov obtained by German authorities that showed his
distinctive tattoos.

Shortly after the killing, Russian police issued an Interpol arrest warrant for
Vadim Krasikov, which was later retracted. German prosecutors suspected that
local police sought help arresting Krasikov but reversed course after learning
of his connections to Russian security services.

Krasikov’s in-laws in Kharkiv held a significant clue for German prosecutors in
the Khangoshvili case—a photo of a tattooed Krasikov taken during a beach
holiday. Forensics experts used the tattoos in the photo, a panther skull
encircled by wings, the emblem of the Russian Interior Ministry’s special
forces, on his left shoulder and a coiled snake on his forearm, to match the
tattoos on Krasikov.

Krasikov’s wife and child moved to Russian-held Crimea after his 2019 arrest and
now live under the watch of the FSB, according to people close to the family.

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HELPING HANDS

Before traveling to Berlin, Krasikov applied for a tourist visa from the French
consulate in St. Petersburg. He used a Russian passport issued a month earlier
in the name of Vadim Sokolov. On Aug. 17, he flew from Moscow to Paris.

Krasikov booked a sightseeing tour and took selfies by the Eiffel Tower and
other landmarks. He flew to Warsaw on Aug. 20, and checked into the Warsaw
Novotel hotel. Krasikov took a tour with a Russian-speaking guide and snapped
more travel selfies, including one at the Wilanów palace and museum, a baroque
castle on the outskirts of Warsaw. 


German police released an image of the bicycle they said Vadim Krasikov used to
follow Zemlikhan Khangoshvili. Photo: Berlin Police

Hotel staff described him to German investigators as a polite, elegantly dressed
man with a groomed beard. Krasikov asked a receptionist to book him a manicure
at a nearby beauty salon. He later told the receptionist he was happy with the
manicure and gave her a generous tip.  

On Aug. 22, he left for Berlin, leaving his luggage and mobile phone in his
Warsaw hotel room, which he had booked through Aug. 25, the day he planned to
fly back to Moscow, according to court files.

In Berlin, he met with people who provided him with new clothes, a black
mountain bike and details about Khangoshvili’s daily routine, German
investigators said. He also received a Glock 26 9mm pistol, along with a
silencer and a reserve magazine. His helpers parked an electric scooter on the
bank of the Spree river for his escape.

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Khangoshvili, the Chechen insurgent and a Georgian national, fled Georgia for
Germany in 2016. He applied for asylum to escape what he claimed were repeated
attempts on his life by Russian operatives. Germany rejected his asylum request
but, like other refugees, he remained in the country. 

He had been in Moscow’s crosshairs since 2004 for allegedly commanding a raid by
Chechen fighters, who took over much of the city of Nazran and killed top
security officials, including FSB officers. Khangoshvili was on a Russian list
of 19 wanted terrorists that Moscow shared with other nations, including
Germany, in 2012. 


An officer standing near a police station in the city of Nazran, Russia, after a
June 2004 raid by Chechen fighters. Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

TV image of Russian President Vladimir Putin visiting Nazran, Russia, on June
22, 2004, after the attack in the city. Photo: RTR Russian Channel/Associated
Press

Russia complained the West didn’t take its extradition requests seriously.
Moscow turned to killing suspects abroad, a practice Putin made legal in 2006.
By 2019, five of the 19 people on the terrorist list had either been killed or
had died by suicide, including Khangoshvili.

At around 11:30 a.m. on Aug. 23, 2019, Krasikov watched the entrance of the
apartment where Khangoshvili lived, on the third floor of a 19th century
Wilhelminian-style building with an ornamental facade lined with red bricks.
Every day around noon, Khangoshvili, a practicing Muslim, would go to a nearby
mosque and walk through the park.

Krasikov waited. He wore a black, longhair wig and a baseball cap, Ray-Ban
sunglasses, a gray hoodie, neon-green socks and cycling gloves. He carried the
loaded pistol, a silencer screwed to its barrel, in a black rucksack. 

Khangoshvili left his home at 11:50 a.m., and Krasikov followed on his bike.
Krasikov shot him just below the left shoulder blade. The first bullet ripped
through his torso and exited through the chest. The attack was seen by dozens of
park goers, as well as the customers and staff of two restaurants.

Throughout the trial, Krasikov appeared uninterested, at times pulling off the
headphones that provided the translation of witnesses testifying against him. 

Shortly after his sentencing, authorities moved Krasikov from Berlin to an
undisclosed high-security facility in Bavaria. There were fears that Chechen
inmates in Krasikov’s former prison would try to kill him.

In his compound by the Danube River, Krasikov has the comforts afforded
prisoners under German law, including daily walks in the garden and books in his
own language. He has been reading Soviet-era novels glorifying the exploits of a
Kremlin secret agent.

Write to Bojan Pancevski at bojan.pancevski@wsj.com and Alan Cullison at
alan.cullison@wsj.com

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Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the September 11, 2023, print edition as 'Putin Wants a Hit Man
Back. U.S. Wants a Swap.'.

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Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of
this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For
non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints
at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.