The Security Services in Spain suspects that the Kremlin ordered gangsters to kill the Russian defecting pilot. Whilst they have expressed concern over the killing of the deserter in Villajoyosa, they stopped short of pointing the finger at the Kremlin’s security services, as the government awaits the forensic report.
Precedents of contract crimes in Europe point to Moscow and suggest that the assassination was not carried out by secret service agents, but rather by subcontracted hitmen who might be living in Spain.
The same sources believe that the subcontracted hitmen may not have left Spanish territory, and that this may not be their first deadly mission carried out in this country.
Since before the outbreak of the current invasion of Ukraine, “the Russians have blurred the lines between intelligence services and organized crime.” Today, depending on their objective, they often prefer to outsource much of their dirty work,” explains one of the sources, and this explanation is confirmed by another, this one from the diplomatic corps, who points out how Russian gangsters are also used by Moscow as informants in the countries where they are established.
Russian and pro-Russian media in Western Europe began to spread the word on the 19th February that the mysterious Ukrainian shot dead was, in fact, the Russian captain and helicopter pilot Maxim Kuzminov, the same man who last August carried out the most notorious defection of the war: he took his aircraft, an MI-8, across the battlefront to a base in Khakiv (Kharkov), where he surrendered, before handing over the helicopter and military intelligence documentation.
Shortly after his surrender to Ukraine and following regular television appearances explaining his opposition to the war, the 28-year-old Russian Kuzminov was given the new identity of Ihor Sevchenko, a 33-year-old fictional Dombasian Ukrainian, from Donetsk, according to the new documentation that was provided to him by the Kiev government. With his new passport he entered Spain last October… ending up in an area with a large Russian presence.
The desertion of Captain Kuzminov also cost the lives of two other helicopter crew members, who were both shot dead by Ukrainian forces because they refused to surrender, and that, fuelled by the pain of their Russian families, led the Kremlin to announce on national television in September that Kuzminov was “walking dead.”
The pace and organisation of the broadcasting of the murder and the true identity of the victim have been closely followed by Spain State Security authorities, starting on February 19 in social media accounts, pseudo-newspapers and blogs in the pro-Russian European orbit.
Some of the sources consulted see a possible precedent for the Alicante crime in that of Lloretde Mar. In the town on the Costa Brava, the magnate Serguei Protosenya, leader of the Russian gas giant Novatek, who was murdered in April 2022. His body was found hanging from a railing of his villa. In the same house, his wife and a 16-year-old daughter were also hacked to death.
Sources from the Mossos d’Esquadra confirm that they are considering gender violence and subsequent suicide as the main avenue of investigation, but they have not ruled out the actions of hitmen.
On the same day, another leader of the Russian gas industry, Vladislav Avayev, leader of Gazprombank, a friend of Protosenya, was found dead in Moscow… also along with his wife and daughter, all from bullets shot from a pistol that the dead man was holding in his hands.
