Two Russian diplomats have been expelled for involvement in a "political" murder that killed a Georgian national from the former Chechen minority, the foreign ministry said Wednesday.
The German foreign ministry said it had taken the measure because Russian authorities had not cooperated in the investigation into the murder of 40-year-old Zelmkhan Khanushvili, who was shot in the head in a Berlin park in August.
"We are compelled to take a series of measures to respond," a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The Russian news agency "Interfax" that the Russian Foreign Ministry condemned the expulsion of Russian diplomats, describing it as "unfriendly" and baseless.
Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Russian House of Representatives Leonid Slotsky stressed that Moscow's response should be "equivalent and similar."
The expulsion of Russian diplomats comes after German federal prosecutors accused the governments of Russia and Chechnya of involvement in the killing of the Georgian citizen.
German prosecutors spokesman Markus Schmidt said the investigation had been withdrawn from Berlin's public prosecution because of its "political" nature.
"There is sufficient evidence that the killings were carried out through the offices of the Russian government or the Chechen Autonomous Republic, but under the Russian Federation," he said.
The Berlin police arrested a man over the killing of a Chechen citizen last summer, and media reports indicated that the victim was a murderer against Russian forces in the second Chechen war (August 1999 to April 2009).
Russia launched two major campaigns, the first between 1994 and 1996 and the second between 1999 and 2000 on Chechen separatists in the Caucasus region on the Russian-Georgian border.