Berlin government’s refusal to extradite Kremlin-employed terrorist prevents Washington from repatriating its citizen before Christmas
The motto of the US Marines is to leave no one behind. The former head of the KGB, Vladimir Putin, is also ready to rescue his most valuable men from Western prisons at all costs. It is not so much a matter of loyalty as of strategy. To buy their courage, Russia must show that it will not abandon them if they fall into enemy hands. And as a weapon of terror among dissidents and exiles, there is nothing better than showing them that those who cross the border to kill them in broad daylight in another country go unpunished and are received as heroes.
Such will be the case with Vadir Krasikov, the bicycle killer. The same one he threw into the river, along with the Glock 26 pistol with which he killed Chechen leader Zelimkhan Khangoshvili with three shots as he calmly walked through Berlin’s Kleiner Tiergarten park after prayer at the mosque. Russia was looking for him. He considered him “a terrorist” and sent one of his best henchmen to hunt him down, as the United States did with al-Qaeda leader Al-Zawahiri when he killed him with a drone on the balcony of his home in Kabul. Only Moscow does not publicly blow its chest. He doesn’t even recognize it.
It was the journalistic investigations of ‘Der Spiegel’ and ‘Bellingcat’ that revealed that Sokolov’s Russian passport was forged. It was issued by the Russian government to hide Krasikov’s identity, trained and sent by the Federal Security Service, which inherited counterintelligence duties from the KGB.
The diplomatic repercussions in several countries were enormous and included a cascade of expulsions from various embassies. Germany’s courts put the full weight of the law on the detainee with a verdict last December that sentenced him to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. To which the prisoner replied calmly. “It’s the same, Russia knows I’m here and will get me out.”
That’s what Putin wanted when he negotiated with the Joe Biden administration to release basketball player Brittney Griner, sentenced to nine years for carrying a cannabis vaporizer in her suitcase, and former Marine Paul Whelan, sentenced to 16 years for espionage. In Putin’s eyes, it was fair to trade the Olympic star for a Hollywood assassin, Viktor Bout, known as “The Merchant of Death,” and the fake American spy for another “spy,” Krasikov.
“We can’t give you what we don’t have,” White House security adviser Jake Sullivan apologized to reporters on Monday. For months, the White House even thought the crazy request was meant to stall negotiations. Putin was unwilling to give Biden a win before the November midterm elections, and sure enough, the next day the Russian government came up with the idea to trade Griner for Bout and strand the ex-Marine in a Russian concentration camp.
It was a bittersweet victory that Biden had to accept, but not before doing everything he could to bring them both home for Christmas. There are no Russian spies in US prisons, and the drug dealers or hackers they hold are of greater concern to Putin. Washington asked Germany for help, which answered with a resounding refusal. He even tried creative formulas that would provide Berlin with something it needed from Russia, but to no avail.
Unlike Bout, who had served more than half of his 15-year prison sentence, Krasikov was just beginning his sentence. Putin may think that justice in Europe operates at the whim of its leaders, just as it does in Russia. Or that it’s enough for Washington to pick up the phone and get his allies to do as they ask, but the truth is Whelan will stay in jail.
Source: La Verdad
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