On 17 February, the British investigative journalism website Bellingcat in cooperation with the German newspaper Der Spiegel and the Russian Insider published an article, revealing further details on the murder of Zelimkhan Khangoschvili in August. 

The article stated that the assassination was planned and organized by Russia’s FSB security agency. The preparation for the murder was supervised directly by Eduard Bendersky, chairman of the Vympel Charitable Fund For Former Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Spetsnaz Officers, and other senior members of the fund, apparently to provide a veneer of deniability. The investigation determined that essential support for the operation, both for training the assassin and for issuance of false identity papers, was provided directly by the FSB and on the grounds of the FSB’s so-called Center of Special Operations.

It further emphasized that the true identity of the assassin was Vadim Krasikov, a former Spetsnaz officer who was co-opted by the security services for the operation. The article further read that both the FSB and Russian police were aware of the true identity of the detained killer but chose to lie to the German authorities by denying that “Vadim Sokolov” was a fake identity and that the Russian authorities attempted to scrub all public data relating to the killer’s true identity, as well as data linked to his immediate family. 

Through an analysis of metadata of two telephone numbers used by Krasikov, the article concluded that this operation was in the works no later than March 2019. As for Bendersky, who according to the investigation was supervising the assassination, he presents himself publicly as a former FSB Spetsnaz officer and current owner of several private security companies employing ex-Spetsnaz soldiers. He often appears in Russian media as a de-facto spokesman for Department V — the FSB successor to the former KGB Vympel unit which, in his words, has re-profiled itself from overseas subversive operations into domestic anti-terror operations against insurgent groups active in Russia’s North Caucasus region. 

The investigation also concluded that alternative theories linking the murder in criminal groups, to Chechnya’s ruler Ramzan Kadyrov, or even to a personal vendetta by rogue former or current security officers, can now be excluded as improbable. What the article still referred to as an open question is whether the operation was solely planned by FSB or that operation may have received intra-agency support from the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU).

The latest development in the Khangoshvili case was recorded in December, when the Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly neglected the involvement of Russia in this case (Caucasus Watch reported).