Somewhere in Germany, a Russian by the name of Vadim Krasikov is serving out his life sentence for the brazen execution of a man in a Berlin park crowded with families in 2019. As the Wall Street Journal reports, after Krasikov calmly shot his victim multiple times, he bicycled away, removed his wig by a nearby river, shaved his beard, changed his clothes, threw his gun into the water, and rode off on an electric scooter planted there by accomplices—a scene straight out of a spy thriller. It's no wonder: Before his capture and conviction, Krasikov worked as an assassin for Russia, and the man he shot had been been on a Kremlin wanted list because he was a Chechen insurgent leader. And now, as the headline on the story by Bojan Pancevski and Alan Cullison puts it, "Putin wants his hit man back."
The Russian leader has personally directed his underlings to pursue a prisoner swap for Krasikov, and such a deal could be crucial to the fate of high-profile Western prisoners in Russia such as Marine veteran Paul Whelan and Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich. The story explores the complex variables at play (German law, for example, forbids the trade of a convicted murderer) but also digs into the history of Krasikov and how he traveled the world eliminating Russia's perceived enemies. The story notes he is allowed access to Russian-language novels in prison, adding that "he has been reading Soviet-era novels glorifying the exploits of a Kremlin secret agent." Read the full story. (Whelan was seen on video recently for the first time in years.)
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