Eght prisoners, whose crimes included murder, espionage, hacking and fraud, were returned to Russia in the largest prisoner swap between the West and Russia since the Cold War.
On December 15, 2021, the day that assassin Vadim Krasikov was found guilty of murder in Berlin, his victims' lawyers sent out a statement that predicted exactly what happened this week.One of the largest and most complex prisoner swaps since the Cold War was almost derailed by a shocking death, competing global agendas, and a US president's fading political ambitions.
The crime was an implicit challenge to rule-of-law in the German capital. Khangoshvili was shot just a few hundred metres from the state Supreme Court and a few blocks away from Berlin's prosecution service.Two young men smoking on the walk-up to a bridge spotted him throwing a bike, the gun and a wig in the canal – and removing a moped from a nearby courtyard.
One warrant – issued through Interpol and then kept accidentally by German authorities – helped its Federal Police to verify Bellingcat's conclusions. "The central government of the Russian Federation was the instigator of the crime; it commissioned the accused."
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