Bullet-riddled body in Spain was defector, Ukraine says

Maksim Kuzminov pulled off a daring escape in the summer when he defected to Ukraine and handed his military helicopter over to Ukrainian commandos in exchange for half a million dollars.

Ukraine trumpeted the defection as a major coup. But in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, he was guilty of the most grievous sin anyone can commit: treason. Ukrainian intelligence officials warned Kuzminov that his life was in danger and urged him not to leave the country.

But he ignored them and was believed to have moved with his money to a small resort town of pastel houses on Spain’s

Mediterranean coast.

Now Kuzminov, 28 at the time of his defection, appears to have met the harsh fate Ukrainian officials warned of. Two Spanish police officials with knowledge of the case said the body of a man found riddled with bullets last week in the coastal town of Villajoyosa was Kuzminov.

Andriy Cherniak, a representative of Ukraine’s military intelligence, also said he could “confirm the fact of his death,” referring to Kuzminov, but he declined to elaborate on the circumstances.

Authorities released no information about possible assailants or a motive, and they have not publicly confirmed the identity. The case has been complicated by puzzling statements issued by the Civil Guard, a branch of Spain’s national police forces, which at one point said the papers found on the body identified him as a 33year-old Ukrainian man. But they added that the documents may be fake.

The death of such a highprofile defector is likely to fuel speculation that it was the work of Russia’s intelligence services and exacerbate already heightened tensions between Moscow and European capitals. President Vladimir Putin has made no secret of his deep disdain for defectors and has allowed targeted assassinations of Russian informants abroad, Western security officials say.

Moscow’s foreign intelligence chief appeared to support the idea that Kuzminov was dead with comments that condemned his defection. “This traitor and criminal became a moral corpse at the very moment he planned his dirty and terrible crime,” Sergei Naryshkin told Russian state news agency TASS on Tuesday, commenting on media reports of Kuzminov’s death.

Word of Kuzminov’s death came just a few days after Alexei Navalny, Putin’s most prominent political adversary, died in a Russian prison, exposing what several Western leaders said are the Kremlin’s brutal tactics against its opponents. “Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death,” President Biden said Friday.