A suspected Russian spy who was working as a diplomat has been found dead in Berlin after apparently falling from an upper floor of the embassy, it has emerged.
The diplomat was yesterday identified as the son of Lieutenant general 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 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 October 19, but details only emerged yesterday.
Authorities believe 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”, Der Spiegel magazine reported.
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 said.
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. There is no evidence he was connected to the killing. (© Telegraph Media Group Ltd 2021)
Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021]
