VILLAJOYOSA, Spain — The men who killed Maksim Kuzminov sent a message. They shot him six times in a parking lot in Spain and then drove a car over his body. And they left a clue to his identity, investigators said: casings from 9-millimeter Makarov bullets, a standard ammunition of the former communist bloc.
The message, said a senior official of the Civil Guard, the police force overseeing the investigation: “I will find you, I will kill you, I will run you over and I will humiliate you.”
Kuzminov defected from Russia to Ukraine last summer, piloting his Mi-8 military helicopter into Ukrainian territory and delivering a sheaf of secret documents to Ukrainian intelligence agents. In doing so, he committed the only crime that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has said he will never forgive: treason.
His murder in Villajoyosa in February has raised fears that Russia's spy networks in Europe are targeting enemies of the Kremlin. Russia's intelligence services have begun to operate at a level of aggressiveness reminiscent of the Stalin era, said Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Russia's military and security services.
“This is no longer conventional espionage,” he said. “These are operations, and these operations could include assassinations.”
In Spain, Kuzminov lived “an indiscreet life,” said the senior Civil Guard official. Exactly how the killers found him has not been established, although two senior Ukrainian officials said he had contacted an ex-girlfriend in Russia. “This was a serious mistake,” said one of the officials.
Senior police officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said the killing bore the traces of similar attacks linked to the Kremlin, including the killing of a former Chechen rebel commander in Berlin in 2019 and the poisoning of former Russian military intelligence agent Sergei V. Skripal in England in 2018. Skripal survived.
Two hooded killers, seen on video from the parking lot of Kuzminov's apartment complex, carried out the mission and disappeared, police said.
While no evidence of Kremlin involvement has emerged, Russia had made no secret of its desire to see Kuzminov dead. After his defection, a Kremlin news program ran a segment quoting fellow pilots and commandos from Russia's military intelligence service. “We will find this person and we will punish him, with all the severity of the laws of our country, for treason and for betraying his brothers,” said one of the commandos. “Eventually we found everyone. Our arms are long.”
Kuzminov's defection was a success for Ukraine, orchestrated by a unit of the Army's intelligence arm specialized in recruiting Russian fighters and sending agents into Russian territory to carry out sabotage missions.
The Ukrainian government paid Kuzminov $500,000 and provided him with a Ukrainian passport and a false name: Ihor Shevchenko.
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 who was a target of Russian authorities. The region is a known base of operations for Russian organized crime figures, some of whom maintain ties to the country's intelligence services, Spanish authorities say.
Another Russian military deserter in Spain, who spoke anonymously for security reasons, described the region where Kuzminov settled as “a red zone,” full of Russian agents. “I will never go there,” he said.
Senior Russian officials spoke of Kuzminov's death with barely concealed joy.
“This traitor and criminal became a moral corpse the instant he planned his dirty and terrible crime,” said Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia's foreign intelligence service. “A dog suffers the death of a dog,” said Dmitri A. Medvedev, the former Russian president who is now vice president of the country's security council.
Ukrainian authorities have largely remained silent. Senior officials worry it could deter others from following Kuzminov's example.
“Russia will intensely spread propaganda — it already is — that they will find all the traitors,” one official said. “This is a hidden message to other citizens of Russia, particularly military personnel, that if you betray us we will find you.”
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