Berlin declared two employees of the Russian embassy persona non grata. As stated by the Foreign Minister of Germany, Annalena Berbock, the decision was made because of the case of the murder of Georgian citizen Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, RIA Novosti reports.
According to Berbock, it was a “state-ordered murder,” as determined by the court today. This is a grave violation of German law and the sovereignty of the FRG. “The Russian ambassador was summoned for a conversation, and it was announced to him that two employees of the Russian embassy were being declared undesirable,” Berbock said.
We will remind, earlier today it became known that the Supreme Court of Berlin sentenced to life without the right to early release Russian citizen Vadim Krasikov (Sokolov), accused of the murder of former Chechen field commander Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in the summer of 2019. The trial of the Khangoshvili murder has been going on since October 2020 in a specially guarded courtroom. The prosecutor’s office interrogated about 50 witnesses. At the same time, the German authorities accused Russia of insufficient cooperation and subsequently expelled two Russian diplomats.
On December 7, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Germany during a session at the High Court of Berlin invited for Krasikov a life sentence. According to representatives of the prosecution, it was proved that a Russian citizen in August 2019 shot and killed a Georgian citizen of Chechen origin Khangoshvili in Berlin’s Tiergarten park.
According to the investigation, 56-year-old Krasikov arrived in Berlin from Warsaw. At noon on 23 August 2019, he approached the victim on a bicycle in the Tiergarten park and fired three shots, two of them in the back of the head. Eyewitnesses described what they saw as “execution”.
Russia, for its part, denies the involvement of its special services in the murder. President Vladimir Putin drew attention to the fact that Khangoshvili participated in the hostilities in the Caucasus on the side of the separatists.
Source: Rosbalt
Tristin is an accomplished author and journalist, known for his in-depth and engaging writing on sports. He currently works as a writer at 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the sports industry.
