Terrorists and Freedom Fighters

A German court has accused the Kremlin of assassinating a man in broad daylight in Berlin a few years ago.

Russia ordered the killing in broad daylight in a Berlin park of a former Chechen militant, a German court found on Wednesday, sentencing the agent who carried out the 2019 act of "state terrorism" to life imprisonment.

Georgian citizen Tornike Khangoshvili was killed with three shots from a Glock pistol on a sunny August day in 2019 in retaliation for his role fighting alongside Chechen separatists against Moscow in the 2000s, Judge Olaf Arnoldi said. He sentenced Vadim Krasikov for the "especially serious" crime.

Germany summoned the Russian ambassador after the ruling, telling him that two of his embassy's 101 diplomatic staff would be expelled, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said.

Unlike a lot of accusations against Putin, this one I believe. (as opposed to the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, which I don't believe the Kremlin did.)
What's more, I don't approve of what the Kremlin did here. BUT that's not the whole story.
To get the whole story you have to consider who he was.

In 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin described Khangashvili as a "bloody terrorist", accusing him of involvement in crimes including the 2004 bombing of the Moscow metro in which 10 people died.

That's just the start. Let's also include what wikipedia has to say.

According to Khangoshvili's brother, Zurab, Zelimkhan participated in the June 2004 attack on security, military and police forces in the Russian Republics of Ingushetia and Dagestan, in which 88 police officials and civilians were killed; Zelimkhan was reportedly wounded in the leg during the operation.

The U.S. has blown up hospitals and schools full of children to kill people with less blood on their hands than this guy, but I don't remember Germany expelling U.S. diplomats for our countless war crimes.
Putin is a killer, but he's a small-time petty thug with a respectable morality compared to Washington.

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Germany can now mourn the loss of the asylum seeking victim.

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zed2's picture

They assassinate critics of the Kim regime.

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Almost all of the data was supplied by Bellingcat. That alone should set off alarm bells.
Here's what Bellingcat themselves had to say about the evidence:

"circumstantial – evidence that Krasikov acted on behalf of the Russian state ..."

So once again no real evidence against Russia.
Germany will evict two diplomats from the Russian consulate. Russia will then retaliate.

You can't punish a country and expect it to go without retaliation unless you have hard evidence
that you can present to the target country.

In all of the accused poisonings claims no laboratory evidence has been supplied to Russia. Meanwhile, Russian hospitals have samples of Navalny's blood before being transported out of Russia and cannot find any poisons. Why would Russia allow Navalny to travel to Germany if they had just poisoned him? Is it possible to believe any claim against Russia from the West without really hard evidence?

Is there any charge against Russia/Putin in the last few decades that hard proof has been presented? Whereas our Presidents since 1945 have authorized discretionary illegal wars that have killed some 30 million people directly and indirectly, not to mention torture and rendition. What about immeasurable harm to people who live in other Countries by US economic sanctions, which by the way are illegal under the UN charter. By estimates some 500,000 children in Iraq were killed.

But Putin is a "killer".

It's all about marketing and what naïve people are willing to believe without a real press in the US.

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Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.

@The Wizard

refutations of the claims against Putin and the Russian government that I've read. It especially goes with the reality that the war mongers are accusing Putin of withholding energy resources from western Europe while Russia is building pipelines and trying to sell these resources! It is the U.S. and western war mongers who are trying to prevent the sales!

And most galling is the accusation that Russia invaded and seized Crimea, with no mention of our sponsoring a violent overthrow of the Ukrainian government or of the Crimean people voting to join the Russian Federation. Western media make no mention of our sponsoring and arming of Nazi military groups. That's dishonest, and it's protective and supportive of Nazis. So for me, Putin's accusers have no credibility.

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lotlizard's picture

while having done nothing for Ed Snowden or Julian Assange, and going along with the whitewash of NSA / Five Eyes spying on German citizens all the way up to chancellor Merkel herself. So now their leader Annalena Baerbock gets to be foreign minister in the new Olaf Scholz government.

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mimi's picture

@lotlizard

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