Russian intelligence

Russian intelligence (Russischer Geheimdienst) is not a German authority or legal institution but a descriptive label used in German law and German criminal cases for Russian state intelligence services — primarily the domestic security service FSB (Federalnaya sluzhba bezopasnosti) or, in certain cases, the military intelligence service GRU. The term is used when a link between an act committed in Germany and a Russian state service is alleged or under investigation. In German criminal proceedings it is not a formal legal concept with a statutory definition, but rather a factual categorisation employed by prosecutors, courts and the media to describe the principal or commissioning party behind an act.

Where a defendant's actions are assessed to have been carried out on behalf of a foreign state power, this can have direct bearing on the basis for the charges — for example in relation to the provisions on murder with particular aggravating circumstances or on state instruction.

In the Tiergarten case, which involves Vadim Krasikov, the expression is used specifically with reference to the FSB. German investigators and the Berlin prosecution service established that Krasikov acted as an FSB agent when, in August 2019, he killed the Georgian-Chechen exiled politician Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in the Tiergarten park in Berlin. The connection to the FSB was central to the classification of the case as a state-ordered murder and to Germany's subsequent diplomatic response towards Russia.

The FSB, the service principally referred to in this context, is the Russian state's domestic security and intelligence service and a successor to the Soviet Union's KGB. Its tasks are to safeguard the state's internal security, counter espionage and terrorism, and carry out intelligence operations — including, according to assessments by Western authorities, operations on foreign territory.

In a true crime context, Russian intelligence represents a distinct category of cases involving suspected state violence beyond Russia's borders, concealed identities, cover stories and coordinated operations. Such cases differ legally and investigatively from conventional crime in that a sovereign state power is the presumed principal, which creates particular evidentiary and diplomatic challenges for the German authorities.