Germany expels Russian diplomats in wake of killing
07 December, 2019
Germany expelled two Russian diplomats Wednesday over the brazen killing of a Georgian on the streets of Berlin in August as prosecutors said evidence suggested the slaying was ordered either by Moscow or authorities in Russia’s republic of Chechnya.
The allegation by Germany’s federal prosecutor’s office was the latest from a Western European nation accusing Russia of an attack on its soil, after Britain last year blamed Moscow for an attempt to poison a former Russian spy in the English city of Salisbury.
Russia denied those allegations, and similarly Russia’s ambassador to Germany Sergey Nechaev rejected the accusations in the Berlin killing, while threatening consequences for the expulsion of its diplomats.
“Such German action will have a strong negative impact on the Russian-German relations and naturally will not be left unanswered,” Nechaev said in a statement.
The case comes at a delicate time in relations between the two nations, as Germany pursues a hard line on sanctions against Russia for its annexation of Crimea, but at the same time is working on a joint pipeline project to bring Russian gas directly to Germany under the Baltic. Germany also needs Russia’s help to salvage the nuclear deal with Iran, which has been unraveling since President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of it unilaterally last year.
On Aug. 23, a 40-year-old man initially identified as Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, an ethnically Chechen Georgian citizen, was gunned down in a Berlin park on his way to a mosque by an assailant on an electric bicycle who sped away and ditched the bike, weapon and a wig in the Spree River, according to news reports.
German authorities said Khangoshvili was also known as Tornike K., and that Russian authorities had him on a terrorist list and accused him of being a member of the “Caucasus Emirate” extremist organization.