While tensions are already strained between Germany and Russia, the Berlin court on Wednesday (December 15th) sentenced a Russian citizen to life imprisonment for murder. According to German justice, the man would have acted on orders from Moscow to eliminate a former Chechen opponent in the Kremlin.
On August 23, 2019, Tornike Kavtarashvili was walking in a park in Berlin, where this Georgian, a former Chechen separatist, has been living with his family for two years. But that afternoon, a cyclist approached and fired two bullets in his back, another at close range. Tornike Kavtarashvili died instantly.
Not far from there, a man was arrested, charged with murder. He called himself a Russian engineer and claimed to be called Vadim Sokolov.
But since October 2020 and the start of the trial, German justice has been convinced of this: the man in the box is in fact called Vadim Krasikov. He is not an engineer, but a former agent of the FSB, the Russian intelligence services. And for the court, no doubt: the order to kill comes from Moscow.
Verdict finally delivered Wednesday, December 15 morning, in the German federal capital: the Russian national is sentenced to life imprisonment.
What anger Moscow. Russian Ambassador to Germany speaks ” a political decision “, Who ” seriously poisons Russian-German relations which otherwise were already difficult », Said Sergei Netchaev.
There is no shortage of points of contention. Latest episode to date, the situation at the border between Ukraine and Russia. If the tensions worsen, the new German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock reminded him: she could block the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which is to link his country to Russia.
In addition to the verdict, Berlin reacted to this ” serious attack on state sovereignty »German when making the decision to expel two Russian diplomats.