Russia suggested to exchange the FSB officer convicted for murder in Berlin - CNN
According to CNN interlocutors, this month, the aggressor country with the FSB unofficial channel has submitted a request for the release of Vadim Krasikov in addition to Victor But. Sources of the channel reported that the US side found a request problematic, in particular because Krasikov was serving a sentence in Germany. Washington does not consider such a request to be an official answer to the US proposal.
However, the United States still turned to the German side to find out if they could agree to such an agreement, CNN writes. US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, during a conversation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, Sergei Lavrov, raised the issue of release of USAs arrested in Russia on July 29 by the former Marpich Paul Wilan and basketball players Brittny Grainer.
According to CNN, the United States recently proposed to exchange Wilan and Grainer for a Russian arms merchant Viktor But, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison in the United States in 2012 to sell a large batch of weapons to the left Columbia group of FARC. In December 2021, a court in Berlin sentenced Vadim Krasikov to a life imprisonment for the murder of a former Chechen field commander, a Georgian citizen of Zelimman Khangshvili.
The country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that the murder was committed "by government order". Khangshvili was shot at the Berlin center on August 23, 2019. He was a field commander during the Second Chechen War. The Russian regime was wanted on charges of terrorism. Khangshvili went to Germany after in 2015, another attempt was made in Georgia. The killer of Khangshvili was detained in Berlin that day. He was a man with a Russian passport named Vadim Sokolov.