Spokesperson hints killer exchanged in prisoner swap was linked to Putin’s personal guard

The Kremlin has admitted that Vadim Krasikov, the assassin freed by Germany in a historic prisoner swap on Thursday, is a serving officer of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB), essentially an acknowledgment that his 2019 murder of a Chechen exile in Berlin was a state-ordered hit.

It also hinted that he was linked to Vladimir Putin’s personal guard.

“Krasikov is an FSB employee,” Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters, adding that he had “served with some of the people working in the president’s security detail”.

Krasikov was one of eight Russians released from jails in the west and returned to Moscow on Thursday as part of a complex exchange deal in which 16 people were freed from Russian custody, including the US reporter Evan Gershkovich and several Russian opposition politicians.