A relative of the “killer on a bicycle” identified him in court and confirmed to the judge his involvement in the special services

Material prepared in collaboration with Newlines Magazine

These days in Germany, the trial of Vadim Krasikov (also known as the “killer on a bicycle”), who was arrested in Berlin after the murder of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, is coming to an end. Recall that Khangoshvili received asylum in Germany after a series of assassination attempts in Georgia and then in Ukraine. Putin accused Khangoshvili of organizing the terrorist attacks, although he did not explain which ones (Russia did not demand from Germany to extradite Khangoshvili and did not provide any documents about his connections with terrorists, there is no information about this in open sources either, it is only known that he participated in Chechen war).

The killer arrived in Germany with a passport in the name of “Sokolov” and continues to insist that this is his real name, although earlier The Insider, Bellingcat and Der Spiegel managed to identify him as Vadim Krasikov, who had previously repeatedly committed contract killings in Russia – for example , together with his accomplices, acting members of the special forces “Vympel” of the FSB, he killed businessman Yuri Kozlov in the city of Kostomuksha, and in 2013 he killed entrepreneur Albert Nazranov (as in Berlin, Krasikov hid on a bicycle after the murder). Earlier, The Insider and Bellingcat testified that immediately before leaving for Berlin, Krasikov trained at the FSB Special Assignments Center and received documents in the name of Sokolov.

On July 29, an important witness appeared on the part of the prosecution in the Berlin District Court – Ukrainian businessman Alexander V., who is Krasikov’s brother-in-law (that is, he is married to Krasikov’s wife’s sister). Krasikov’s wife Tatyana, shortly after the Berlin murder and the arrest of her husband, was transported with the children to Crimea, where she received a new name and a passport with an FSB series. But since Tatiana is from Ukraine, she still has a house there, where law enforcement officers visited with a search, finding many family photos. At the same time, the investigators interrogated Alexander V., The Insider was able to get acquainted with the interrogation protocol yesterday.

The witness identified Krasikov in the photographs found from Krasikov’s wedding in 2010 in Moscow and his honeymoon in Egypt (and in one of these photographs Krasikov poses in a T-shirt with a logo very reminiscent of the emblem of the FSB Special Assignments Center. In addition, Krasikov’s tattoos are visible on the family photos – a snake on the left forearm and a lynx on the right (resembling the emblem of the special forces SOBR “Lynx”), in the wound, photos of the same tattoos were published in leaked police documents as tattoos of the arrested “Sokolov”.