The body that on February 13th horrified the inhabitants of La Cala de La Villa Joiosa in Alicante, a postcard-perfect fishing village in Spain, near Benidorm, had six shots. Five in the chest and one in the head. He was lying on the parking ramp of the Cala Alta residential complex and had been hit by his own car, with which the killers apparently fled. Hours later, the car was burned in El Campello, 17 kilometers from the residential area of Cala Alta.
According to documents found with the body, the victim was a 33-year-old Ukrainian. It later became known that, in fact, the fingerprints matched Maxim Kuzminov, a pilot of the 319th helicopter regiment of the Russian Air Force, who defected to Ukraine in August last year. Since, Russia considered him “a criminal traitor”.
The assassination of the deserter pilot on Spanish soil adds acrimony to relations between Madrid and Moscow, which are not going through their best moment.
After learning of the death in prison of Russian opponent Alexei Navalny, which according to the Kremlin, the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the Russian ambassador to Madrid. Spain disapproves of Vladimir Putin’s failure to clarify the death of one of his greatest enemies.
The Russian pilot who defected to Ukraine, in front of the press in Kiev, last September. Photo: APThe escape
The judge of the Court of First Instance and Instruction number 3 of La Vila Joiosa, on duty on the day of the crime at the door of the parking lot of the Cala Alta residential complex, keeps the case under summary secrecy. Civil Guard sources specified that, according to investigators, the documents that identified the body turned out to be false.
The Ukrainian press confirmed, citing military sources, that the fingerprints matched Kuzminov, 28.
He graduated from the Sizran Aviation School in southern Russia. Since his country invaded Ukraine in February 2022, he has participated in operations to transport military personnel or cargo. Never in bombings.
On August 9 last year, during a mission near the border between Russia and Ukraine with two colleagues who were unaware of his plan, Kuzminov began flying at very low altitude. He silenced the radio and crossed the border. He landed in the Ukrainian city of Kharkov, where they welcomed him with open arms and killed his two companions. As soon as they landed on Ukrainian soil, those traveling with him did not want to give up and tried to escape.
Ukraine revered him as a hero and turned his testimony into propaganda.
Kuzminov did not avoid the flashes. “I don’t want to be an accomplice to Russian crimes,” he said.
He said he cried when he learned of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and that Volodymyr Zelensky’s government had offered him money, a new identity and protection.
“I was trying to understand what my country was doing. And all I saw was evil, horror and crime. “I didn’t want to be a part of it,” she told the cameras.
He encouraged other Russian pilots to follow in his footsteps. And he added that his parents had accompanied him in the decision and that they too were protected in Ukraine.
¨The Spanish Civil Guard investigates the garage where the body of Russian defector Maxim Kuzminov was found, in Villajoyosa, Spain, on February 13. Photo: REUTERS He allowed himself to dream that, perhaps, he would move with his parents to some other European country. And he even dared to invite an ex-girlfriend to visit him and enjoy her new life with him.
An encrypted chat
The pilot allegedly contacted Ukrainian intelligence via an encrypted Telegram chat and, in exchange for leaving Vladimir Putin’s army and telling them what he knew, received half a million dollars.
Because together with his Mi-8 helicopter, Kuzminov brought sensitive information about Russian movements. Above all, it released data on Putin’s army air bases and their communications systems.
Initially, Russia believed the helicopter was lost during a mission. It took him a couple of days to realize Kuzminov’s defection. Immediately the Military Training Committee He opened a case “for treason”.
And the relatives of the two companions who flew with him and were murdered asked for his head. “If Maxim really did what he did, I hope they find him and kill him,” the wife of one of them told Russian television.
The head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, Sergei Narishkin, called him “a criminal traitor”: “This traitor and criminal became a moral corpse already at the moment when he planned his dirty and terrible crime,” Narishkin said.
How and when did you enter Spain?
The Spanish government avoids thinking aloud about these issues. “We must let the investigation proceed,” was the only thing Executive spokeswoman Pilar Alegría said about it.
No one was able to specify how long he had been living in La Villa Joiosa in Alicante, among those clusters of stately buildings of more than ten floors, much in demand by Eastern European tourism and which the Spaniards usually only frequent in the summer, as holiday homes .of the week.
In La Villa Joiosa there is an Orthodox church and a supermarket selling Eastern European products. No one could recognize the pilot. His body remains in a room at the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Alicante.
Maxim Kuzminov was assassinated three days before the Kremlin announced Navalny’s sudden death in a prison in the Arctic Circle. The bullet casings that riddled Kuzminov and that no one bothered to collect were of Russian origin. Another revenge for Putin?
Source: Clarin
Mary Ortiz is a seasoned journalist with a passion for world events. As a writer for News Rebeat, she brings a fresh perspective to the latest global happenings and provides in-depth coverage that offers a deeper understanding of the world around us.