MOSCOW, December 16, Reuters -- Russia has rejected a German court ruling that it ordered the murder of a former Chechen militant in a Berlin park in 2019 as completely divorced from reality and said it would retaliate.
The Kremlin said that the unpleasant episode should not affect ties between President Vladimir Putin and Germany's new Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
A German court found on Wednesday that Russia had ordered the killing and sentenced the agent who carried out what it called an act of state terrorism to life imprisonment.
German judge Olaf Arnoldi found that Georgian citizen Tornike Khangoshvili was killed in August 2019 with three shots in reprisal for his role fighting alongside Chechen separatists against Moscow in the 2000 s.
Russia's foreign ministry said the verdict was politically ordered and that the Russian defendant was innocent.
We reject the accusations of involvement of Russian state structures as unfounded and completely divorced from reality, it said. Moscow would respond with adequate measures to Germany's decision to expel two of its diplomats in the wake of the ruling.
Asked if the court's verdict could affect the approval of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, built under the Baltic Sea to connect Russia and Germany, Kremlin spokeswoman Dmitry Peskov reiterated that the project served both the interests of Moscow and Berlin.
The pipeline is in focus after Western countries led by the United States threatened to impose tough economic and political sanctions on Moscow if it invades Ukraine.