Monday, December 20, 2021
After sanction for zoo murder
Russia expels two German diplomats
The verdict in the Tiergarten murder has triggered a diplomatic reaction spiral: Because Foreign Minister Baerbock has declared two Russian secret service employees to be undesirable, Moscow has announced retaliation: two German diplomats have to leave the country.
In response to the expulsion of two Russian diplomats from Germany, Russia has announced the expulsion of two German diplomats. The Foreign Ministry in Moscow stated that the accusations made by the German side were unfounded and “disconnected from reality”. The German government had previously declared the two Russian diplomats to be undesirable after the court had established that the Tiergarten murder in Berlin in 2019 was carried out “on behalf of Russian government agencies”.
“The Russian side categorically rejects the unfounded and unrelated allegations of the involvement of Russian state structures in this crime,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. In addition, the German ambassador had been called in, reported the RIA news agency. The federal government did not initially provide a statement.
Murder on behalf of Moscow
Last Wednesday, the Berlin Court of Appeal sentenced a Russian citizen to life imprisonment for the Tiergarten murder. The court saw it as proven that Vadim K. shot a Georgian of Chechen origin in the Kleiner Tiergarten in Berlin in August 2019. The court was convinced that he was acting on behalf of government agencies in Russia. According to the court, the Georgian fought as a unit commander against Russia during the second Chechen war between 2000 and 2004 and was therefore classified as an enemy of the state and a “terrorist” by the Russian security services.
Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock of the Greens summoned the Russian ambassador on Wednesday and had two employees of the diplomatic staff of the Russian embassy declared undesirable. You have to leave the country now. The verdict of the Berlin judiciary on the act of violence shows “that bad things have happened here,” said Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Thursday. It is therefore “absolutely right that the Foreign Minister responded with a clear answer”. The liberal Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann also said that he was “behind the decisive reaction of Foreign Minister Baerbock”. It is unacceptable to the German state “that a foreign state in Germany can kill people in public spaces”.