Signs of Kremlin in Killing of Russian Defector
VILLAJOYOSA, Spain — The men who killed Maksim Kuzminov sent a message. They shot him six times in a parking garage in Spain, then ran over his body with a car. And they left a clue to their identity, investigators said: shell casings from 9-millimeter Makarov rounds, a standard ammunition of the former Communist bloc.
The message, said a senior official from Guardia Civil, the police force overseeing the investigation: “I will find you, I will kill you, I will run you over and humiliate you.”
Mr. Kuzminov defected from Russia to Ukraine last summer, flying his Mi-8 military helicopter into Ukrainian territory and handing a cache of secret documents to Ukrainian intelligence operatives. In doing so, he committed the one offense President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has said he will never forgive: treachery.
His killing in Villajoyosa in February has raised fears that Russia’s European spy networks are targeting enemies of the Kremlin. Russia’s intelligence services have begun operating at a level of aggressiveness reminiscent of the Stalin era, said Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Russia’s military and security services.
“It’s not about conventional espionage anymore,” he said. “It’s about operations — and these operations might include assassinations.”
In Spain, Mr. Kuzminov lived “an indiscreet life,” the senior Guardia Civil official said. Exactly how the killers found him has not been established, though two senior Ukrainian officials said he had reached out to a former girlfriend in Russia. “This was a grave mistake,” one of the officials said.
Senior police officials speaking on the condition of anonymity said the killing bore hallmarks of similar attacks linked to the Kremlin, including the assassination of a former Chechen rebel commander in Berlin in 2019 and the poisoning of the former Russian military intelligence operative Sergei V. Skripal in England in 2018. Mr. Skripal survived.
Two hooded killers, seen in surveillance video from the parking garage of Mr. Kuzminov’s apartment complex, carried out the mission and disappeared, police officials said.
While no evidence of Kremlin involvement has emerged, Russia had made no secret of its desire to see Mr. Kuzminov dead. After his defection, a Kremlin news program ran a segment quoting fellow pilots and commandos from Russia’s military intelligence service.
“We’ll find this person and punish him, with all the severity of our country’s laws, for treason and for betraying his brothers,” said one of the commandos. “We find everyone eventually. Our arms are long.”
The defection of Mr. Kuzminov was a coup for Ukraine, orchestrated by a unit in the military’s intelligence arm that specializes in recruiting Russian fighters and running agents on Russian territory to carry out sabotage missions.
Mr. Kuzminov said in interviews that he became disillusioned after reading postings by Ukrainians on the internet. “I understood who was on the side of good and who was on the side of truth,” he said in an interview with a blogger.
The Ukrainian government paid Mr. Kuzminov $500,000 and provided him with a Ukrainian passport and a fake name: Ihor Shevchenko.
Mr. Kuzminov left Ukraine in October and drove to Villajoyosa, a small town on the Mediterranean coast. There, he settled on the ninth floor of a modest apartment building.
It was a curious choice for someone being targeted by the Russian authorities. The region is a well-known base of operation for Russian organized crime figures, some of whom maintain ties to the country’s intelligence services, the Spanish authorities say.
Another Russian military defector in Spain, speaking on the condition of anonymity for safety reasons, called the region where Mr. Kuzminov settled “a red zone” filled with Russian agents. “I’ll never go there,” he said.
Senior Russian officials spoke of Mr. Kuzminov’s death with barely disguised glee.
“This traitor and criminal became a moral corpse the moment he planned his dirty and terrible crime,” said Sergei Naryshkin, the director of Russia’s foreign intelligence service. Dmitri A. Medvedev, the former Russian president who is now the deputy chairman of the country’s security council, said, “A dog gets a dog’s death.”
The Ukrainian authorities have been mostly quiet. Senior officials worry it could dissuade others from following Mr. Kuzminov’s example.
“Russia will intensively spread propaganda — they’re already doing it — that they will find all traitors,” one senior official said. “This is a hidden message to other citizens of Russia, especially military personnel, that we will find you if you betray us.”