Zelimkhan Khangoshvili (15 August 1979-23 August 2019) was a Chechen-Georgian field commander of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria during the Second Chechen War. He was assassinated by the FSB operative Vadim Krasikov in Berlin in 2019.
Biography[]
Zelimkhan Khangoshvili was born in Duisi, Georgian SSR, Soviet Union in 1979 to a family of Kists. He joined the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria's army in 2001 during the Second Chechen War, becoming a field commander and participating in a June 2004 attack on Nazran, where 88 Russian policemen and civilians were killed. Zelimkhan was wounded in the leg during the attack, but he later returned to Georgia and commanded an anti-terror military unit in South Ossetia during the Russo-Georgian War. Khangoshvili's unit was never deployed, and he went into exile in Germany in 2016 after several attempts on his life by Russian intelligence operatives. On 23 August 2019, he was killed in a drive-by shooting perpetrated by the bicycle-riding assassin Vadim Krasikov as he walked through Berlin's Kleiner Tiergarten on his way to a mosque.