Russia ordered the killing in broad daylight in a Berlin park of a former Chechen militant, a German court found on Wednesday, sentencing the agent who carried out the 2019 act of “state terrorism” to life imprisonment, writes Reuters.

Georgian citizen Tornike Khangoshvili was killed with three shots from a Glock pistol on a sunny August day in 2019 in retaliation for his role fighting alongside Chechen separatists fighting Moscow in the 2000s, judge Olaf Arnoldi said, sentencing Vadim Krasikov for the “especially serious” crime.

The finding could pile pressure on a German government barely a week in office to take a firmer stance towards Moscow amid warnings that Russia could be contemplating military action against Ukraine.

“In June 2019 at the latest, state organs of the government of the Russian Federation took the decision to liquidate Tornike Khangoshvili in Berlin”, - Arnoldi said, adding that Russia had issued Krasikov with false papers with which to travel for the killing.

“Khangashvili had given up the fight against the Russian Federation years before. He had not held a weapon in his hands since 2008”, - Arnoldi said. “This was not an act of self-defence by Russia. This was and is nothing other than state terrorism”.

The Russian embassy in Berlin said the verdict was “not objective, and politically motivated”, TASS news agency reported.