Some Germans think the hostage exchange with Russia was a dirty deal

AGREEING TO free a convicted murderer was “not easy” said Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, with typical understatement. Germany would probably have preferred to play no role in the complex, multi-country deal that saw the release of Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, and 15 other prisoners from Russian and Belarusian jails. But it could not remain aloof, because Vladimir Putin was adamant about securing the release from German captivity of Vadim Krasikov, a hitman who in 2019 was sent by Russian security services to murder a Chechen exile in Berlin. Yesterday, after serving less than three years of a life sentence that he was given by a Berlin court in 2021, a tracksuited Mr Krasikov was greeted on the Moscow airport tarmac with a bearhug by Mr Putin himself.