Vadim Krasikov, the dark figure at the centre of Vladimir Putin’s prisoner-swap demands

The release of Putin’s assassin Vadim Krasikov sends a dual message: the Kremlin will hunt down its enemies, even if they flee to the West, and it won’t abandon those loyal to his government.

Vadim Krasikov – a Russian hit man and former intelligence officer convicted of murdering an enemy of the Kremlin in a Berlin park – told a guard in the German prison where he was serving a life sentence that, “the Russian Federation will not leave me to rot in jail.”

On Thursday, that boast became reality. Krasikov was released by German authorities and handed over to Russia as part of the largest East-West prisoner swap since the Cold War. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, wrongfully convicted of espionage in July, was also part of the exchange.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had personally demanded Krasikov’s return to Russia. For him, the assassin’s release is meant to send a dual message: The Kremlin will hunt down its enemies, even if they flee to the West, and it won’t abandon those who remain loyal to his government.

Vadim Krasikov was responsible for a string of assassinations. Picture: Supplied

In a February interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Putin clearly signalled his interest in a swap deal involving Krasikov, whom he didn’t name but described as a Russian patriot imprisoned for a killing in a Western capital.

“That person, due to patriotic sentiments, eliminated a bandit,” Putin said. “Whether he did that of his own initiative or not, that is a different question.”

In August 2019, Krasikov gunned down rebel leader Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in broad daylight in a park in the heart of the German capital, a stone’s throw from the chancellor’s office and parliament. Russia says Khangoshvili was an Islamist extremist who targeted Russian security forces.

A Berlin court in 2021 found Krasikov, now 58, guilty of murder and concluded he had committed an act of “state terrorism” on behalf of Russia, choosing to carry out a gruesome and public execution in order to intimidate the Kremlin’s opponents.

“For Moscow, it was important to get Krasikov back in order to send a clear message: ‘We take care of our people,’” said Andrei Soldatov, a Russian author and expert on Russia’s intelligence services who now lives in London and writes about Russian intelligence agencies.

Putin and Krasikov, both former officers of Russia’s biggest spy agency, the Federal Security Service, or FSB, had met each other, according to relatives of Krasikov. Krasikov may have been a member of Putin’s personal security detail, according to Western and Ukrainian intelligence officials.

German policemen at the site of the Zelimkhan Khangoshvili murder scene in Berlin. Picture: AFP.

Krasikov’s family members say he boasted of having done target practice with Putin at an FSB shooting range.

It isn’t the first time Putin has worked to bring a loyal foot soldier home. In 2004, after Qatar convicted two Russian agents of planting a bomb under the car of a fugitive rebel leader, killing him and maiming his teenage son, Russia arrested two Qatari athletes in Russia. Eventually, the Russians were freed and the Qatari athletes sent home.

Putin publicly thanked Qatar’s emir for the Russians’ release. German prosecutors have said publicly that Krasikov was likely working with the FSB department that specialises in clandestine operations abroad. He is a veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan and served in an Interior Ministry special-forces unit and an elite FSB anti-terrorism squad, the prosecutors say.

German prosecutors have also said Krasikov was involved in killings inside Russia, including the 2013 shooting of a Russian businessman who clashed with the FSB. The killing, which was captured by CCTV in Moscow, bore a resemblance to the Berlin park assassination: A gunman pedalled up to his victim on a bicycle and shot him dead at close range.

Another murder linked to Krasikov by intelligence services in the West and Ukraine is the killing of David Dvali, a former adviser to Putin who ran afoul of his boss. In Moscow in 2000, a gunman approached Dvali on a bike and killed him with a single shot to the head.

Krasikov, who is married to a Ukrainian woman, was part of a clandestine Russian FSB unit that worked with the pro-Russian government of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych when he was in office, according to a Ukrainian intelligence official.

Yanukovych fled Ukraine for Russia in 2014 after mass protests against his government that have come to be known as the Maidan uprising. Western and Ukrainian officials say Krasikov is believed to have been part of a Russian sniper team that targeted demonstrators. More than 100 were killed.

After Gershkovich, the Journal reporter, was arrested in March last year, Russian negotiators demanded Krasikov’s release on what they indicated were direct orders from Putin, according to multiple Western officials.

When Krasikov married in 2010, agents of the FSB as well as the FSO, Putin’s bodyguard, were in attendance. Krasikov’s wife told her family that her husband would disappear from home for weeks at a time on missions, never revealing the destination, her brother Aleksandr Vodorez said in an interview. Vodorez and his parents now live as refugees in Germany.

Throughout the German investigation, the trial and even after his conviction Krasikov stuck to his fake identity and cover story, claiming he was a tourist named Vadim Sokolov. During two years of investigation and trial, he received only two brief visits from Russian consular officers.

Russian officials never confirmed Krasikov’s identity, also maintaining that he was a tourist named Sokolov. Detectives who questioned him found him polite and even funny, saying Krasikov would make jokes about a married woman he said was his mistress and who he claimed was the reason for his Berlin sojourn.

In 2019, Putin was asked about the case at a press conference in Paris. Visibly angry, he said Khangoshvili had been a terrorist who had killed many in Russia, and that Germany had refused to extradite him. “He was an absolutely bloodthirsty killer,” Putin said.

German authorities suspected that Khangoshvili had Islamist links and he was denied asylum, although he was allowed to remain in the country. They said no formal extradition request was ever filed by Moscow.

Krasikov’s unusual tattoos later helped German investigators identify him from old photographs and seal his conviction. Krasikov’s left shoulder is emblazoned with a crowned panther skull encircled by wings, the emblem of the Lynx special force of Russia’s Interior Ministry, which has been deployed to combat terrorism and on other missions in the Caucasus and elsewhere. His right forearm bears the image of a snake poised to strike.

After he was convicted in Germany, Krasikov started serving his sentence near Berlin, but then was moved due to fears that other inmates were plotting to kill him, according to German police.

In the penitentiary he was ultimately moved to, Offenburg prison, Krasikov enjoyed the rights guaranteed to prisoners by law in Germany, including the right to work, receive professional training, visit the gym or participate in group sports such as soccer and order books in his own language.

Last year, he was reading Soviet-era bestsellers glorifying the exploits of a Kremlin secret agent.

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