BERLIN, December 18. /TASS/. German authorities are registering an increased number of contacts with the Russian side on the investigation into the murder of a Georgian citizen in Berlin than before, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the Bundestag on Wednesday.
"We had to expel these diplomats because we did not see any willingness to cooperate on the Russian side in due time," the chancellor pointed out. "I said this to Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Normandy Four meeting."
"Now we are seeing more contacts," Merkel said. According to her, "the federal government is doing it at an appropriate level."
Georgian citizen Zelimkhan Khangoshvili (also known as Tornike Kavtarashvili), 40, was gunned down in Berlin on August 23. The office of Berlin’s prosecutor later in the day declared detention of a suspect identified as 49-year-old resident of Russia.
On December 4, the German Foreign Ministry declared the expulsion of two Russian embassy staffers from Germany due to what was described as insufficient cooperation by the Russian authorities in investigating the killing of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili. Moscow responded in kind.
Russian President Vladimir Putin told a news conference following the Normandy Quartet summit in Paris on December 9 that the killed man was one of the organizers of explosions in Moscow’s metro and that his name was on the wanted list. Russia dismisses any involvement in the Berlin incident.