DISINFO: Russia not involved in the killing of Georgian citizen
SUMMARY
There is no evidence that Russian government agencies were involved in the incident (A Georgian citizen was killed on August 23 in Berlin, Germany).
RESPONSE
A recurring narrative of pro-Kremlin disinformation that the West blames Russia unfairly and without evidence.
Regarding the incident in Berlin, a 40-year-old man, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, was shot dead in a Berlin park just before midday on 23 August 2019. The victim was a Chechen exile who had survived two previous attempts on his life. The Dossier Center, a London-based research group founded by Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, a Russian former oil billionaire, and other investigation groups, such as Bellingcat, have identified the suspect as Vadim N. Krasikov, a 49-year-old Russian citizen from Siberia who, according to Bellingcat, used fake identity documents to enter Germany a few days before. The German Foreign Office says Russian officials have not responded sufficiently to repeated requests for information, despite repeated high-level and urgent demands. In addition, the German Federal Foreign Office insisted in a statement that "the Federal Public Prosecutor General has taken over the investigations into this case as there are sufficient grounds to believe that the killing was carried out either on behalf of state authorities of the Russian Federation or of those of the autonomous Chechen Republic as part of the Russian Federation". On December 4th, Germany expelled two Russian diplomats in response to this incident.