Krasikov, alias Vadim Sokolov, was found guilty of gunning down former Chechen separatist commander Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in broad daylight in a Berlin park in 2019.

The case sparked a major rift between Germany and Russia, with tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions.

Krasikov stayed silent during his trial, speaking only through his lawyer, and has remained surrounded by mystery right up until the exchange came to light.

Through his laywer, Krasikov claimed he had been misidentified and was really a Russian construction engineer named Vadim Sokolov, but a Berlin court found him guilty of murder in December 2021.

According to German prosecutors, Krasikov approached the Georgian national from behind on a bicycle, firing two shots from a Glock 26 pistol equipped with a silencer.

After the victim fell to the ground, Krasikov allegedly shot him in the head, killing him on the spot, before getting back on his bicycle and fleeing.

Police divers later recovered the handgun, a wig and a bicycle from the nearby Spree river.

Berlin judges said the killing had been ordered by Moscow, but the Kremlin at the time slammed what it called a “political” ruling.

Mirror murder

Krasikov was born in 1965 in what is now Kazakhstan, then part of the Soviet Union, according to the Bellingcat investigative website.

In June 2013, Krasikov was the prime suspect in the murder of a Russian businessman who had been the subject of several previous assassination attempts, the website said.

The crime in Moscow was reportedly similar in many ways to the Berlin murder –- in both cases, the killer had approached his target on a bicycle, shot him in the back and in the head, and left on his bike.

Krasikov is likely to have been a member of an elite unit of the FSB, Russia’s state security service, according to Bellingcat.

President Vladimir Putin first hinted that he wanted Krasikov as part of a potential prisoner swap during an interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson in February.

Without mentioning him by name, Putin referred to Krasikov in the context of negotiations over a deal to free jailed US journalist Evan Gershkovich — one of the prisoners released in Thursday’s exchange.

Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, was sentenced in July to 16 years for spying in a case rejected as a “sham” by the White House.

“There is a person serving a sentence in a US ally. That person, out of patriotic sentiments, eliminated a bandit in a European capital,” Putin said.

Asked after Putin’s TV interview whether Krasikov was an agent for the FSB, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “I will leave that question without an answer.”

Navalny plan?

Krasikov’s name had also previously come up in other potential prisoner swaps involving high-profile figures, including the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Shortly after Navalny’s death, his ally Maria Pevchikh said Putin “was offered to exchange… Krasikov” for Navalny and two US citizens.

According to US media reports, Krasikov was also named during efforts to negotiate the freedom of Paul Whelan, a former Marine also among Thursday’s crop of freed prisoners.

Prosecutors in Berlin said Krasikov travelled as a tourist in the days before the murder, arriving in Paris where he visited sights before travelling to Warsaw.

Commenting on Khangoshvili’s murder, Putin described the former Chechen commander as a “fighter, very cruel and bloody” who had joined separatists against Russian forces in the Caucasus and also been involved in bombing attacks on the Moscow metro.

According to German media, Khangoshvili had survived two previous assassination attempts in Georgia before seeking asylum in Germany.

He had been living in Germany for several years and also went by the name Tornike Kavtarashvili.