The gang that carried out the execution of the Russian pilot who defected to Ukraine, Maksym Kuzminov, in the community garage of a residential area in Vila Joiosa on 13 February used ammunition of Russian origin to murder their victim.
Although the exact calibre or brand has not been revealed, the fact that the cartridges are Russian-made confirms the suspicion that the deceased is not the 33-year-old Ukrainian shown in his documentation but was 28-year-old Captain Kuzminov.
Sources close to the investigation consider that the executioners used Russian ammunition so that there is no doubt that the execution is shown to have originated in Russia and that it is the direct and announced consequence of his desertion at the controls of a Mi8 helicopter during a mission to transport parts for fighters for Vladimir Putin’s Army.
Meanwhile, agents from the Homicide Group of the Judicial Police of the Civil Guard of Alicante are still searching Interpol records for a comparison of fingerprints and DNA in both Russia and Ukraine to be able to confirm without a doubt the identity of the murdered man, initially identified as a 33-year-old Ukrainian citizen but now shown to be carrying documentation that is false.
Without officially confirming that it is the Russian pilot, however, the representative of Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR), Andri Yusov, said on Monday that Maksym Kuzminov had died, although he didn’t mention the circumstances or the location of where the body was located.
A GUR source added that the pilot was shot dead and that a burned-out car was found near his home that could have been used by the murderers, the latter being an circumstance that coincides with what happened in the La Vila Joiosa crime, because shortly after the murder, the burning car, supposedly used by the aggressors in their escape, was located in the neighbouring town of El Campello .
The victim received half a dozen bullet wounds after entering the parking lot of the La Vila urbanisation where he had been renting a property for around four months. According to eyewitnesses, the vehicle in which the murderers fled drove over the victim’s arm. Apparently, after his desertion, he had decided to come to live in Spain.
This Tuesday, just one week after the crime, the head of the Russian Foreign Espionage Service, Sergei Narishkin, stated that Maxim Kuzminov was a “traitor.”
“This traitor and criminal became a moral corpse the moment he planned his dirty and terrible crime,” Narishkin said, according to the official Russian agency RIA Novosti. Narishkin added: “In Russia they often say: about the dead you either talk well or you don’t.”
When Russian public television reported on the desertion in October, the reporter announced that the order to assassinate the pilot had already been given.
The body was found around five in the afternoon, when Emergency 112 received notification of its appearance in the underground garage of a building located on Calle Marinada in La Cala, in the municipality of La Vila.
The shooting began on the second floor of the basement, but the body was located on the exit ramp of the parking lot, so it is believed that the victim began tried to flee the scene but finally collapsed.
The investigators have no doubt about the “professionalism” of the pilot’s executioners. If they can be put in the dock (investigators assume that at least two people participated) their prosecution will take place in the Provincial Court of Alicante.
