About a month ago, we spoke in these columns about the mysterious death of Maxim Kuzminovthe twenty-eight-year-old Russian pilot who hit the international news when, last August, hijacked a Russian MI-8 military helicopter within the “Synytsia operation”. After obtaining assurances that his family would be safely removed from Russia, Kuzminov handed himself over to the authorities in Kiev.
The mysterious death of Kuzminov in Spain
Six months after the feat, Kuzminov was found dead in Spain, after Spanish media had launched the news of the discovery of the body of a 33-year-old Ukrainian on February 13 in the municipality of Villajoyosa, near Alicante. The Spanish press had spoken of a “settlement of scores” regarding the body of the young man riddled with bullets. A very weak lead that immediately gave rise to suspicion of Moscow’s hand: a “wet” operationas certain dirty operations carried out by the KGB were defined.
If Mosca had limited himself to defining the young pilot as “a traitor and a criminal“, last October Rossiya 1 had broadcast a report in which Russian military intelligence men claimed that they would find Kuzminov, and that they would punish him “to the maximum extent permitted by law“and that he would not have lived”enough to see the process“. A sinister omen that left no more doubt about the hand that would kill him in Spain, the place he had chosen to move to.
The three clues to Kuzminov’s death
A month after Kuzminov’s death, the picture seems to be clearer than ever. In addition to the six shots, the assassins would have run over his body, almost as if wanting to send a precise signal; as well as the shell casings left on the asphalt, belonging to a Makarov 9mm, mixed-action automatic pistol, short weapon of the communist bloc which from 1951 was adopted as an ordinance weapon by the armed forces of the Soviet Union. Although a collectible war remnant, Makarovs are still very popular in concealed carry—even in the United States—while some variants are still produced in China, Bulgaria, and, of course, Russia. If you put together the story of the killed pilot, the manner of the murder and the weapon used, three clues can only prove it. The hand that eliminated Kuzminov, therefore, would be Russian, guilty of the most serious of crimes for a country at war: desertion and treason.
But the death of the Russian pilot casts a shadow over the whole of Europe Russian espionage. If the long hand of the Kremlin was able to locate and reach Kuzminov in Spain, operate there, kill him and get away with it, which means at least two things: the first, that the Russian secret services have once again moved on from conventional espionage (that of “peace times “) to the old style one; the second, that their network is more widespread than you might think if you are able to plot a state murder in the middle of the Union.
Kuzminov’s mistakes that cost him his life
This would mean that Europe has blunt weapons to protect all those who are on the run or decide to denounce the system Vladimir Putin. Should we expect new Sergei Skripals and the like? To be fair, it should be reiterated that the Spanish authorities have repeatedly underlined how Kuzminov would have made a series of slights, leading a life that was not at all under the radar: he frequented the clubs of his compatriots, he drove around in a flashy Mercedes S class (price varying from 116 to 252 thousand euros), but above all he had contacted his ex-girlfriend who he had invited to come and visit him. This could be precisely the fatal mistake that would have put Mosca and his assassins on his trail.
But Kuzminov’s biggest mistake may have been his move to Spain. After his unprecedented operation (so impactful that it led Kiev to make a documentary about it), he was offered a Ukrainian passport under a false name, in addition to 500 thousand dollars expected at the time of his recruitment. The pilot, however, had decided to move to Villajoyosa, epicenter of Russian organized crime in the area. A curious choice for those who know they are being hunted by the Kremlin: drug and human trafficking, contract killings, are just some of the activities that this wing of Russian crime prefers in this area.
The suspicion of the link between Russia and Catalan independence activists
Not only that, but more than one Russian defector, defecting from his own country, would have stated that he could never move to a similar area, with a high density of Russian agents infiltrated. The fact is that Madrid’s annual report on threats to national security claims that Russia has strengthened its intelligence activities on Spanish soil following the expulsion of 27 Spanish diplomats as a result of the invasion of Ukraine.
Kuzminov’s death, in fact, has reopened a line of investigations that began in 2021 and which seemed to have fallen into oblivion: namely the hidden link between Catalan independence activists and Russia through troll and bot factoriestools of a much larger disinformation plan, aimed at destabilizing the European countries on the front line in supporting Kiev.
