Kremlin confirms freed Russian hitman Vadim Krasikov is FSB agent

The Kremlin confirmed on Friday that Vadim Krasikov, an assassin serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 murder of a dissident in Berlin who was among the eight Russians released in a wide-ranging prisoner exchange on Thursday, is a serving member of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB).

Upon his arrival at Vnukovo Airport on Thursday night, Krasikov was welcomed not only by former FSB agent Vladimir Putin, but also by members of the FSB’s elite special forces Alpha Group and the Presidential Security Service, in which he had also reportedly served, according to the Kremlin.

Krasikov was sentenced to life imprisonment in Germany in 2019 for the broad daylight assassination of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a Georgian citizen who had fought as a Chechen rebel commander during the Second Chechen War.

Manana Tsiatieva, Khangoshvili’s widow, told Kavkaz.Realii, the North Caucasus affiliate of US-funded broadcaster RFE/RL, that the German authorities had not informed her in advance of the exchange. “The fact that it happened shows that the opinion of the victims is not important to the German authorities,” Tsiatieva said.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz admitted that the decision to exchange Krasikov had been a very difficult one for the German authorities, while German newspaper Die Welt reported that Krasikov had not been pardoned ahead of his release, but had simply been deported from Germany.

As well as revealing that the historic prisoner exchange had been primarily negotiated between the FSB and the US Central Intelligence Agency, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that the children of deep-cover Russian spies Artyom Dultsev and Anna Dultseva had been unaware that they were Russian, only learning the truth about their background during the flight to Moscow.