December 05, 2019

German-Russian relations in danger again?

topic:	Human Rights
located:	Russia, Germany, Ukraine
editor:	Igor Serebryany

Murder of a Georgian national committed in Berlin in August could not spoil a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Kremlin said on Wednesday. 

The Russian Foreign Ministry called allegations that 40-year-old ethnic Chechen Zelimkhan Khangoshvili was killed by Russian secret service order "fantasies".

The killer was arrested the same day. His ID showed he was a 49-year-old Russian named Vadim Sokolov. However, investigators believed the passport was forged.

Khangoshvili used to be an officer at the Georgian Interior Ministry. During the war in Chechnya in the early 2000s, he participated in fighting on the separatists' side. On that ground, some experts suggest that his murder could have been orchestrated by pro-Kremlin leaders of Chechen republic.

Despite the Kremlin attempts to downplay the incident, Germany declared non-grata persons two Russian diplomats on Wednesday. The German Foreign Ministry added it has reserved the right to undertake more steps unless Moscow cooperates in the investigation. 

Whatever the declarations, the incident will unlikely deteriorate bilateral relations, director of the Russia-German Forum, member of German Foreign Policy Council in Berlin, Alexander Rhar believes. "There are forces in Germany and in NATO that are interested in preventing Angela Merkel from befriending with Vladimir Putin. This could be seen during the NATO recent summit where those advocating closer relations with Moscow nearly fought with those advocating containment of Russia. But, in any case, the Berlin murder is too small-scaled to affect the Russia-German dialogue significantly", he says.

Though German tabloids immediately compared the murder in Berlin with the attempt on Sergei Skripal in London in 2018, there is nothing in common between those two incidents.

"Skripal is a British subject while Khangoshvili didn't even have refugee status in Germany. His murder did not harm any interests of Germany. He could be killed in any other country. Moreover, German authorities had once declared him an international terrorist", Rhar reminds.

This is why the German Foreign Ministry has reacted moderately to the findings of the prosecutor's office. "German authorities can't put a blind eye on the murdered but they are reluctant to make something out of nothing. So they chose to expel two run-of-the-mill Russian diplomats as the way to minimize the damage", the expert says.

Recent developments have been nothing but just another episode of the information war, an expert in the Center for German Studies in the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Kamkin agrees.

"This is just information noise, sort of 'horrible Russians kill people in German cities'. I am pretty sure no additional sanctions against Moscow will follow", he says.

Image: Bundesregierung/Steins