Terrorist's Thunderstorm on a Bicycle: Who is Vadim Krasikov, Released in Exchange?

Eliminated a Chechen militant who seized a school in Beslan

Vladimir Putin personally arrived at Vnukovo late Thursday evening to meet the Russians who were returned as a result of the exchange. The president greeted each of them personally and said encouraging words to some. The head of state seemed to greet Vadim Krasikov, who was one of the first to descend the stairs, especially warmly. «MK» found out who Vadim Krasikov is.

Photo: kremlin.ru

Vadim Krasikov's biography is shrouded in mystery to a certain extent. According to official data, he was born on August 10, 1965, in the village of Kenestobe, Chimkent region, Kazakh SSR. He served in the special forces, lived in Irkutsk and Moscow.

Mr. Krasikov's biography has many black holes. He was associated with Russian state security structures, but there is no official confirmation of this — as well as a denial.

Krasikov was included in the lists for the «great exchange» in connection with the life sentence handed down to him in Germany in the case of the contract killing of the Chechen terrorist of Georgian origin Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, who was shot in 2019 in Berlin.

However, Vadim Krasikov appeared in law enforcement reports (Russian, not German) five years earlier. In 2014, as the main suspect in the case of the murder of a businessman from Kabardino-Balkaria, Albert Nazranov, in Moscow, he was first put on the federal and then on the international wanted list. A year later, Krasikov was removed from the federal wanted list. A little later, the warrant sent through Interpol channels was also withdrawn.

According to media reports, on September 3, 2015, Krasikov received a Russian internal passport in the name of Vadim Andreevich Sokolov.

According to the German press, Vadim Krasikov is a former employee of the Vympel unit of the Russian FSB. He allegedly arrived in Germany in 2019 on a passport in the name of Sokolov. His target, as German publications write, was Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, who was involved in the terrorist attacks in Moscow. As political scientist Sergei Markov emphasized in his Telegram channel, Khangoshvili was also an active participant in the attack on the school in Beslan.

In Germany, Krasikov was accused of tracking down Khangoshvili in Berlin, riding up to him on a bicycle and shooting three times, after which he tried to escape. He was soon detained and arrested, and in 2021 he was sentenced to life imprisonment. The prosecution insisted that the murder was politically motivated.

It is curious that Vadim Krasikov was not pardoned by the German authorities even after his return as part of the exchange. According to German law, a person sentenced to life imprisonment can only count on a pardon after serving 15 years of imprisonment.