In a report published by Reuters, Vladimir Putin is looking to exchange American Journalist, Evan Gershkovich for Vadim Krasikov who Reuters has described as a hitman.
Krasikov is currently serving a life sentence for the murder of an exiled Chechen-Georgian dissident at a park in Berlin, in open daylight. Krasikov was sentenced in 2021.
Krasikov was born in what is now known as modern-day Kazakhstan in 1965 and open-source investigator(s) at Bellingcat, an investigative journalism group from the Netherlands, believe that he worked for Russia's FSB State Security Service an equivalent would be the United States FBI. An unnamed German judge had accused Russia of state terrorism following the murder of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in Tiergarten Park. The judge says Putin must have authorized the order to kill Khangoshvili as Russian law gives him the power to approve operations to kill individuals should the state label them as a terrorist and these operations can be conducted abroad as well. Russia has disputed the judge's interpretation.
Krasikov's lawyers have also disputed his guilt and have gone on record saying that Krasikov isn't the Russian state hitman that he's being accused of. Instead, he's Vadim Sokolov a Russian tourist who was simply visiting Berlin on the day of the murder. However, Krasikov was identified by Ukrainian intelligence by his tattoos and was photographed while he was attending a wedding in Eastern Ukraine.
How The Operation Was Done
Krasikov carried out the operation by riding behind Khangoshvili on a bicycle and shot him three times on August 23rd, 2019. He was then spotted as by-passers found him trying to change his clothes and dispose of the bicycle by throwing it into a pond. The by-passers then informed the police. He entered the territory by traveling to Paris as a tourist and then entered Germany a day before the operation was carried out.
Germany has not provided comment on the potential for a prisoner swap for Evan Gershkovich. However, it would be strange because Germany would be swapping a person convicted of murder in its territory for a United States citizen. It remains unclear why Russia has only now decided on a prisoner swap, but it also remains unclear whether the deal would even be accepted. Russia has attempted to make a swap for Krasikov before for other American prisoners as reported by HNGN and was criticized by former President Trump.
