Body of ‘Russian spy’ working as diplomat found at Berlin embassy
Son of high-ranking FSB official thought to be the latest in a string of Kremlin envoys’ unexplained deaths
A SUSPECTED Russian spy who was officially working as a diplomat has been found dead in Berlin after apparently falling from an upper floor of the embassy complex, it has emerged.
The diplomat was yesterday identified as the son of Lt Gen Alexei Zhalo, one of the most senior figures in the FSB intelligence service, the successor agency to the KGB.
Lt Gen Zhalo heads the FSB’S Office for the Protection of the Constitutional System, which has been linked to the poisoning of Alexei Navalny and two prominent Russian journalists.
The suspected spy has not been officially named but the Bellingcat website identified him as Kirill Zhalo, Lt Gen Zhalo’s 35-year-old son. German police found his body on the pavement outside the Russian Embassy on Oct 19, but details only emerged yesterday.
Authorities are understood to believe that he was an FSB officer working under diplomatic cover in Germany.
Russia refused permission for a post mortem and the cause of death remains “unclear”, Spiegel magazine quoted German security sources as saying.
A spokesman for the Russian Embassy described his death as a “tragic accident” and said the country would not comment further for “ethical reasons”.
“We consider speculations that appeared in a number of Western media in the context of this tragic incident to be absolutely incorrect,” they told Russia’s Tass news agency.
The Office for the Protection of the Constitutional System is an FSB division mainly handling domestic security.
An investigation by Bellingcat and Mr Navalny found that officers from a secret unit within it shadowed the Russian opposition leader for years and were nearby when he was poisoned.
Vadim Krasikov, a Russian national on trial in Germany over the alleged murder of a man who fought against Russia in the Second Chechen War, has also been linked to the FSB division.
Krasikov is accused of the 2019 murder of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a Georgian national living in Germany, in what prosecutors allege was a state-sponsored assassination ordered by the Kremlin.
Kirill Zhalo was posted to Berlin in June 2019, two months before Khangoshvili was shot dead in a city park in broad daylight. There is no evidence he was connected to the killing.
His death comes less than three months after David Smith, a 57-year-old security guard at the British Embassy in Berlin, was arrested for passing classified secrets to Russia. Again, there is no evidence linking Zhalo to that incident.
Zhalo is the latest of a striking number of Russian diplomats to meet their deaths in unexplained circumstances.
They include Vitaly Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the UN, who was found dead in 2017. An initial post mortem found further study was needed to determine the cause of his death, but details of the findings were kept secret because he had diplomatic immunity.
Sergei Krivov, a Russian diplomat, was found dead with a head wound at the New York consulate on the day of the 2016 US election. Initial reports suggested he fell from the consulate roof, but consular officials later claimed he died of a heart attack in his office.
Alexander Kadakin, the Russian ambassador to India, died after a brief illness in January 2017. The same month Andrei Malanin, head of the consular department at the Russian Embassy in Greece, was found dead at his Athens home. Mirgayas Shirinsky, the Russian ambassador to Sudan, was found dead in the swimming pool of his Khartoum residence in August 2017.
The mysterious deaths have not been limited to diplomats. Oleg Erovinkin, a former FSB general believed to have helped the former MI6 spy Christopher Steele to compile a dossier on Donald Trump, was found dead in the back of his car in Moscow in December 2016.
A 49-year-old porter fell to his death from his apartment balcony inside the Russian Embassy complex in Berlin in 2003.
‘We consider speculations that appeared in a number of Western media in the context of this tragic incident to be absolutely incorrect’