Hitmen trailed Russian pilot who defected to Ukraine before killing him in Spain

Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence service has confirmed that Captain Maxim Kuzminov, who flew to Ukraine in his Mi-8 helicopter in August 2023, died in Spain, without giving the cause of death.

Spanish police confirmed that a body was found riddled with bullets on 13 February in an underground garage in the town of Villajoyosa, near Alicante in southeastern Spain inews.co.uk reports.

“This traitor and criminal became a moral corpse at the very moment when he planned his dirty and terrible crime,” Russia’s foreign intelligence chief, Sergei Naryshkin, was quoted as saying by the country’s Tass news agency in Moscow’s first comment on the case since news of the killing emerged.

A Civil Guard source told Spanish media that professional hitmen spent weeks observing Mr Kuzimov’s routine before the murder.

Spanish Civil Guard officers investigate the garage where the body of the defector was found (Photo: Rafa Arjones/Informacion.es/Reuters)

The murder raises questions over why secret services in Ukraine or Spain did not better protect Mr Kuzminov.

Mr Kuzminov’s defection to Ukraine was presented last year as a major coup for Kyiv. He said he could not understand why his “beloved motherland” would enter into a war with Ukraine and that he had switched sides to oppose “genocide”.

He said Ukraine had promised him new documents, protection for his family, and a cash reward. The Ukrainian authorities said they had offered Mr Kuzminov the opportunity to stay in Ukraine and he “would have been protected here”.

A burned car allegedly used by the killers to escape the scene is parked outside the Spanish Civil Guard barracks, in El Campello, Spain

Spain’s defence ministry, responsible for the country’s intelligence services, declined to comment on the case to i.

Western leaders say Russia frequently assassinates those it deems traitors abroad. Moscow says the West has not provided evidence to support such assertions.

In 2022, Russian former gas executive Sergey Protosenya, 55, was found hanged in the garden of his luxury home in the Spanish resort of Lloret de Mar – his wife Natalya and his daughter Maria were hacked to death with an axe.

Spanish authorities suggested Protosenya killed his wife and daughter before killing himself, but his son insists his family was murdered.

A Spanish court in Villajoyosa has opened an investigation into Mr Kuzminov’s death, according to a judicial source. At the time of the pilot’s death, the victim carried documentation identifying him as a 33-year-old Ukrainian national, but his identity was still under investigation, the source said.

Other members of the aircrew died during his defection. Moscow said Mr Kuzminov killed them; he said they panicked and fled, and may have been killed subsequently.