Russia’s spy chief comments on death of defector pilot in Spain

Russia’s spy chief has said that a Russian pilot who defected to Ukraine and was found shot dead in an underground garage in Spain last week was a “moral corpse” when he planned his crimes.

Spain’s state news agency EFE reported that a body found on 13 February in the town of Villajoyosa, near Alicante in southern Spain, belonged to pilot Maksim Kuzminov, who had landed in Ukraine with his Mil Mi-8 helicopter last August, The Guardian reports.

“In Russia it is customary to speak either good of the dead or nothing at all,” Sergei Naryshkin, the director of Russia’s foreign intelligence service (SVR), was quoted as saying by the Tass news agency when asked about Kuzminov.

“This traitor and criminal became a moral corpse at the very moment when he planned his dirty and terrible crime,” Naryshkin said.

Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence said Kuzminov had been found dead in Spain. Kuzminov’s defection to Ukraine was presented last year as a major coup for Kyiv.

He had been living in Spain with a Ukrainian passport under a different name, EFE said. Ukraine’s Ukrainska Pravda newspaper reported that Kuzminov had been found shot dead.