One of two Russian diplomats expelled from Germany over the killing of a former Chechen rebel in Berlin has been identified as Yevgeny Sutsky, an officer in the GRU military intelligence agency, a report by the German tabloid Bild and the investigative outlet Bellingcat has said. Germany sent the two unnamed Russian Embassy employees home earlier this month because it said Moscow did not sufficiently cooperate with its investigation into the August murder of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili. A Russian citizen arrested on suspicion of shooting the Georgian citizen on his way to a mosque in the German capital was reported to have received Russian state support.

After he was extradited from Germany, the Russian Embassy deleted an article about one of his lectures.

But they forgot to delete the pictures used in the article ...#ShitHappens pic.twitter.com/uJS28AWe2m — Julian Röpcke (@JulianRoepcke) December 16, 2019

Sutsky had worked at the Russian Embassy in Berlin as a military attache since 2017, Bild and Bellingcat said. According to the outlets, Germany’s intelligence services began monitoring Sutsky this year over suspicions that he was trying to recruit German politicians to lobby for Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.