FSB track revived in murder of Georgian in Berlin

The headquarters of the Russian secret services in Moscow. Getty Images

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The track of the involvement of the FSB is revived in the case of the assassination, on August 30, 2019 in Berlin, of a Georgian national. A case that had poisoned relations between Russia and Germany. According to an investigation by the investigative site Bellingcat, the Russian site The Insider and the German daily Der Spiegel, the alleged perpetrator had close links with a unit of the Russian internal intelligence agency.

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In the weeks and months before the murder of the Georgian national in Berlin, the alleged murderer, Vadim Krassikov, 54 , was in very regular contact with members of the Vympel Charitable Fund, an association of former officers of the FSB forces specializing in targeted assassinations.

He also stayed on several occasions at two FSB properties, in particular in a secret training center for special forces in Moscow. He spent several days there, just before he left for Berlin. It was the analysis of the calls and the demarcation of Vadim Krassikov's mobile phone that led to these conclusions. Among his most regular contacts: Edouard Bendersky, president of the Vympel veterans association, who is also the stepfather of Maxime Iakoubets, a Russian hacker wanted by the United States, accused of being linked to the intelligence services of the Kremlin.

When he was arrested in Berlin after the murder, the alleged killer had a passport with him in the name of Vadim Sokolov, an assumed name which did not appear in any Russian database. All these elements allow the authors of this investigation to assert that the murder was not a simple settling of scores between criminals as argued by Vladimir Putin, but an operation sanctioned by the FSB, or even higher.

More information on this survey on the Bellingcat website, on the Der Spiegel website , or on the Russian website The Insider

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