EGN NEWS DESK
The males who killed Maksim Kuzminov wished to ship a message. This was apparent to investigators in Spain even earlier than they found who he was. Not solely did the killers shoot him six instances in a parking storage in southern Spain, they ran over his physique with their automotive.
They additionally left an vital clue to their identification, in response to investigators: shell casings from 9-millimeter Makarov rounds, a normal ammunition of the previous Communist bloc.
“It was a transparent message,” stated a senior official from Guardia Civil, the Spanish police pressure overseeing the investigation into the killing. “I’ll discover you, I’ll kill you, I’ll run you over and humiliate you.”
Mr. Kuzminov defected from Russia to Ukraine final summer season, flying his Mi-8 army helicopter into Ukrainian territory and handing the plane together with a cache of secret paperwork to Ukrainian intelligence operatives. In doing so, he dedicated the one offense President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has stated repeatedly he won’t ever forgive: treachery.
His killing within the seaside resort city of Villajoyosa final month has raised fears that Russia’s European spy networks proceed to function and are concentrating on enemies of the Kremlin, regardless of concerted efforts to dismantle them after Mr. Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Russia’s intelligence companies have been placed on a battle footing and begun working at a stage of aggressiveness at house and overseas paying homage to the Stalin period, stated Andrei Soldatov, an creator and professional on Russia’s army and safety companies.
“It’s not about standard espionage anymore,” he stated. “It’s about operations — and these operations may embody assassinations.”
In Spain, Mr. Kuzminov lived “an indiscreet life,” the senior Guardia Civil official stated. He went to bars common with Russian and Ukrainian clientele, burning via the cash he had acquired from the Ukrainian state. He drove round Villajoyosa in a black Mercedes S-Class.
Exactly how the killers discovered him has not been established, although two senior Ukrainian officers stated he had reached out to a former girlfriend, nonetheless in Russia, and invited her to come back see him in Spain.
“This was a grave mistake,” one of many officers stated.
Senior police officers talking on the situation of anonymity stated the killing bore hallmarks of comparable assaults linked to the Kremlin, together with the assassination of a former Chechen insurgent commander in Berlin in 2019 and the poisoning of the previous Russian army intelligence operative Sergei V. Skripal in Salisbury, England, in 2018. Mr. Skripal survived.
The two hooded killers who appeared on surveillance digital camera footage from the parking storage of Mr. Kuzminov’s condo complicated have been clearly professionals who carried out their mission and shortly disappeared, police officers stated.
“It shouldn’t be frequent right here in Spain for somebody to be shot with a number of ammunition,” stated Chief Pepe Álvarez of the Villajoyosa Police Department. “These are indications that time to organized crime, to a felony group, to professionals.”
While no proof of direct Kremlin involvement has emerged, Russia had made no secret of its need to see Mr. Kuzminov dead. Weeks after his defection, the Kremlin’s signature Sunday night information program ran a phase quoting fellow pilots and commandos from Russia’s army intelligence service vowing revenge.
“We’ll discover this individual and punish him, with all of the severity of our nation’s legal guidelines, for treason and for betraying his brothers,” stated one among commandos, who was not recognized. “We discover everybody ultimately. Our arms are lengthy.”
The defection of Mr. Kuzminov was a coup for Ukraine, orchestrated by a covert unit within the HUR, Ukraine’s army’s intelligence arm. The unit makes a speciality of recruiting Russian fighters and working brokers on Russian territory to hold out sabotage missions. Some troopers from the unit have acquired specialised coaching from the C.I.A. on working in hostile environments.
While the unit had been in a position to persuade particular person Russians and generally small teams of troopers to defect, Mr. Kuzminov’s daring flight — and the excessive worth of what he delivered — was unprecedented, stated a senior Ukrainian official with data of the operation.
The success of Ukraine’s efforts to recruit defectors is troublesome to quantify. Thousands of Russian residents have joined volunteer items preventing with the Ukrainian army and at instances crossed into Russian territory for lightning raids on border outposts. It doesn’t seem, nevertheless, that they’ve shifted the stability of energy in any important means.
Mr. Kuzminov stated in interviews that he turned disillusioned after studying postings by Ukrainians on the web.
“I understood who was on the facet of excellent and who was on the facet of fact,” he stated in an interview with a Ukrainian blogger.
In the early night of Aug. 9, 2023, Mr. Kuzminov took off in a army helicopter from an airfield within the Kursk area in western Russia for what was imagined to be a easy cargo supply to a different base within the nation. With him within the cockpit have been a technician named Nikita Kiryanov and a navigator, Khushbakht Tursunov. Neither soldier appeared to pay attention to Mr. Kuzminov’s plans.
Shortly after takeoff, Mr. Kuzminov turned off the helicopter’s radio communications tools and dove to an altitude of slightly below 20 ft to evade radar. Then he crossed into Ukraine.
In interviews with Ukrainian information media, Mr. Kuzminov was coy about what occurred subsequent. He stated solely that he had landed the helicopter at a prearranged rendezvous level within the Kharkiv area, simply over 10 miles from the border, the place he was met by HUR commandos.
“Everything went effectively,” he stated in a single interview.
The actuality is extra difficult. When he crossed into the nation, Mr. Kuzminov shocked a gaggle of Ukrainian fighters, who opened fireplace, in response to one other senior Ukrainian official. In the confusion, Mr. Kuzminov was shot within the leg.
What occurred to his crewmates is much less clear. A Russian tv report about them, citing a medical expert, claimed that the 2 had been shot and killed at shut vary and prompt that Mr. Kuzminov had killed them earlier than touchdown. The senior Ukrainian official concerned within the operation stated this was not true.
“Our troopers shot them,” the official stated. “Otherwise they’d have killed Kuzminov and will have escaped in that helicopter.”
In interviews, Mr. Kuzminov stated his crewmates have been unarmed however by no means defined how they died.
The HUR clearly thought-about the mission a serious success. Shortly afterward, Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s army intelligence chief, introduced that the operation would give confidence to different Russian troopers who have been contemplating defection. The intelligence company even produced a documentary movie concerning the operation to showcase its triumph.
Mr. Kuzminov went on a media tour, holding a information convention, giving interviews denouncing Russia’s battle and calling on others to comply with his instance.
“You gained’t remorse it,” he stated within the documentary. “You’ll be taken care of for the remainder of your life.”
The Ukrainian authorities paid Mr. Kuzminov $500,000 and supplied him a Ukrainian passport and a faux title: Ihor Shevchenko. They additionally supplied him an opportunity to affix them in preventing Russia.
Instead, Mr. Kuzminov left Ukraine in October and drove to Villajoyosa, a small city on the Mediterranean coast common with British and Eastern European vacationers. There, he settled on the ninth flooring of a modest condo constructing a couple of 10-minute stroll from the seaside.
It was a curious alternative for somebody so explicitly focused by the Russian authorities for liquidation. The area is a widely known base of operation for Russian organized crime figures, a few of whom preserve ties to the nation’s intelligence companies, the Spanish authorities say.
In 2020, the Spanish police arrested greater than 20 individuals related to Russian felony teams, a few of whom have been working out of Alicante, in the identical province as Villajoyosa. The individuals have been charged with laundering tens of millions of {dollars} acquired via drug and human trafficking, extortion and contract killings, the Spanish authorities stated.
Another Russian army defector who has settled in Spain and spoke on the situation of anonymity for security causes known as the area the place Mr. Kuzminov settled “a purple zone” full of Russian brokers. “I’ll by no means go there,” he stated.
On the morning of Feb. 13, a white Hyundai Tucson entered the storage underneath Mr. Kuzminov’s condo constructing and parked in an empty spot between the elevators utilized by residents and the ramp resulting in the road. Two males waited there for a number of hours, in response to the senior Guardia Civil official.
Around 4:20 p.m., Mr. Kuzminov drove into the storage, parked and commenced strolling towards the elevators. As he handed in entrance of the white Hyundai, the 2 assailants emerged, known as out to him and opened fireplace. Though he was struck by six bullets, most of them within the torso, Mr. Kuzminov managed to dash a brief distance earlier than collapsing on the ramp.
The two killers received again into the automotive and ran over Mr. Kuzminov’s physique on their means out. The car was discovered a number of miles away, burned with the assistance of what investigators imagine was a particular accelerant. It took specialists every week to determine the make and mannequin of the automotive and set up that it had been stolen — two days earlier than the killing — in Murcia, a city about an hour away.
A particular unit within the Guardia Civil is finishing up the investigation underneath strict secrecy guidelines. The authorities haven’t publicly confirmed that Mr. Kuzminov was the individual killed. They have struggled to succeed in officers in Ukraine who may assist them.
But among the many neighborhood of Russian and Ukrainian expatriates dwelling in Villajoyosa, there was no query of who was behind the dying.
“Everyone thinks the companies took him out,” stated Ivan, 31, who fled his house metropolis, Kherson, Ukraine, in the beginning of the battle. “They’re all over the place.”
Spain’s annual report on nationwide safety threats, revealed this month, stated Russia had revamped its intelligence operations within the nation after the expulsion of 27 Russian diplomats over the battle in Ukraine. Though fewer in quantity, the report stated, Russian spies continued to hunt out methods to “destabilize Spain’s help for NATO.”
In the previous, Russian officers have twisted themselves into knots attempting to obfuscate the Kremlin’s connection to varied assassinations round Europe, usually within the face of clear proof of state involvement. Mr. Kuzminov’s case is totally different. Senior Russian officers spoke of his dying with barely disguised glee.
“This traitor and felony turned an ethical corpse the second he deliberate his soiled and horrible crime,” stated Sergei Naryshkin, the director of Russia’s overseas intelligence service.
Dmitri A. Medvedev, the previous Russian president who’s now the deputy chairman of the nation’s safety council, stated, “A canine will get a canine’s dying.”
In distinction with the good fanfare that accompanied Mr. Kuzminov’s defection, the Ukrainian authorities have been principally quiet concerning the killing. Senior officers fear that it may dissuade others from following his instance.
“Who will cooperate with us after this?” stated one of many senior officers.
“Russia will intensively unfold propaganda — they’re already doing it — that they’ll discover all traitors,” he stated. “This is a hidden message to different residents of Russia, particularly army personnel, that we are going to discover you should you betray us.”
