The FSB bicycle assassin Putin wants back in Russia
By Jake Lapham
It is now one year since American journalist Evan Gershkovich was detained on a reporting trip in Russia. His best hope of release may be Vadim Krasikov, who is sitting in a German jail, convicted of an execution that was ordered by the Kremlin.
In the summer of 2013, a Moscow restaurant owner was gunned down in the Russian capital. A hooded man jumped off a bike and shot his victim twice before fleeing.
Six years later, an exiled Chechen commander, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, was murdered in a busy Berlin park in eerily similar circumstances, shot by a man on a bike with a silenced Glock 26 in broad daylight.
The assailant was arrested after dumping a pistol and wig in the River Spree close to the Reichstag, the building housing the German parliament.
A passport bearing the name “Vadim Sokolov” was found on the Berlin assassin, but authorities quickly concluded that was not his name after all.
The bald, strongly built man they had arrested was actually Vadim Krasikov, a Russian national with links to the FSB, the Russian security service – and the prime suspect in the 2013 murder in Moscow.
In a recent interview with US TV talk show host Tucker Carlson, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin appeared to confirm reports that his country was seeking the release of the “patriot” Krasikov in exchange for American journalist Evan Gershkovich.
