A Russian helicopter pilot defects to the Ukrainians. Moscow orders him killed. Six months later, a body riddled with bullets lies in a Spanish underground car park.
A suspected Russian defector shot dead in Spain was killed by hired assassins on behalf of the Kremlin, according to a report in the newspaper El País. The murderers most likely came from abroad and have already left the country, the newspaper wrote on Thursday, citing Spanish intelligence circles.
The man’s body with multiple gunshot wounds was found on Tuesday last week in an underground car park of an apartment building in the town of Villajoyosa near Alicante on the Mediterranean. The burned-out getaway car of the perpetrator or perpetrators was found nearby shortly afterwards.
The victim was the Russian helicopter pilot Maxim Kuzminov, who defected to the Ukrainian troops with his plane last August, the newspaper wrote. State television in Moscow reported in the fall that the Russian secret service had received the order to kill the “traitor to the fatherland.”
The Spanish authorities have not yet officially confirmed the identity of the dead man. When asked about the article on Thursday, the Interior Ministry in Madrid simply emphasized that the investigation was ongoing. In diplomatic circles in Madrid, however, the case is viewed as “extremely serious,” the newspaper wrote. If Moscow’s authorship of the crime is confirmed, Spain will give a “robust answer.”
Newspaper: Called former girlfriend in Russia
The Russian government did not claim responsibility for the attack, but a Russian secret service acknowledged the news of the death with glee. “This traitor and criminal became a moral corpse at the moment when he was planning his dirty and terrible crime,” said the head of the Russian foreign intelligence service SWR, Sergei Naryshkin, according to the state news agency Tass.
Kiev, however, has verified the man’s death. “We can confirm this fact,” Ukrainian military intelligence spokesman Andriy Yusov told public television on Monday. Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the National Security Council, said Kiev had suggested the pilot stay in the country. “He would definitely have been safe here.” The Russian secret service would not have had such an easy time in Ukraine as it did in Spain.
Spanish government spokeswoman María Pilar Alegría said in an initial statement about the murder on Tuesday: “Investigations are ongoing in this case, so we cannot provide any information at this time.” One must “let the (police unit) Guardia Civil do its work and wait for the results of the investigation.”
Received more than 460,000 euros from Kiev
“El País” wrote that many Russians and Ukrainians lived in the residential complex in Villajoyosa where the man living under a false Ukrainian identity was shot. Hiding there as a defector was risky because the Russian secret services often used compatriots as sources of information, the newspaper wrote, citing intelligence circles. In addition, Moscow’s services sometimes worked with local gangs. Kuzminov was also quite careless. So he called his former girlfriend in Russia and invited her to visit him in Spain.
The pilot flew from Russia to Ukraine in August last year with a fully equipped Mi-8 army helicopter. After landing at a Ukrainian military airfield, the other two crew members who were not informed of the operation were shot as they fled, according to Ukrainian sources. The Russian received the equivalent of over 460,000 euros from Kiev for the crime.
