Politicians in Germany have been left uneasy by a prisoner exchange spearheaded by US President Joe Biden in which a convicted Russian killer was released.

Vadim Krasikov was convicted by a German court of killing exiled Chechen partisan Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in 2019. The broad-daylight shooting in Berlin, which occurred just minutes from the Bundestag, is speculated by German authorities to have had the support of the Kremlin.

Having been sentenced to life, Krasikov was instead released back into Russian hands on August 2 as part of one of the largest East-West prisoner swaps since the fall of the Soviet Union, with the decision to hand over the hitman in exchange for political prisoners rubbing some German representatives up the wrong way.

“From a human perspective, I welcome the release of 16 political prisoners,” Bundestag MP for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Roderich Kiesewetter, who serves on the Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote online.