The Spanish Government had no evidence that he was in Spain Maxim Kuzmikovhe Russian pilot who deserted last August to surrender to the Ukrainian Army with the helicopter he was driving and that he was shot dead on the 13th in the Spanish town of Villajoyosa.
This was stated to journalists this Thursday by the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, in Aldea del Fresno (Madrid) after visiting the bridge installed by the Army in this municipality.
“He came freely and the Government had no evidence that this person was here in Spain,” Margarita Robles simply explained about this event on the Valencian coast (east of the country), where a large community of Russians and Ukrainians reside.
Kuzminov was shot dead with half a dozen shots on the ramp of the garage of the La Cala de Villajoyosa urbanization where he lived rented. for four months by unknown people, it is believed that at least two, who They made the vehicle in which they fled pass over the body of the murdered man before heading to the nearby town of El Campello, where the car was burned.
It is known that the murdered person is Kuzminov because This was revealed by those responsible for Russian and Ukrainian intelligence. in recent days through various media outlets in their respective countries.
In October, Russian public television claimed, showing three alleged GRU members, that they had received orders to eliminate the deserter. “He will not live long enough to be judged,” assured one of them.
New identity with Ukrainian passport
From the beginning, the investigators of the Spanish Civil Guard considered that it was a settling of accounts although at that first moment the relevance of the victim could not be intuited, who After the defection in August 2023, he had obtained a new identity with a new Ukrainian passport.
Sources in the case informed EFE yesterday that they are working on official identification through mandatory scientific methods, such as fingerprints, DNA or teeth, without the process having yet been completed.
The Russian’s defection was announced last September, when Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR) published images in which the pilot, who was then 28 years old, explained how he was contacted by Ukraine, which offered him to switch to the Ukrainian side in exchange for money and protection..
After learning of the murder, the head of the Russian Foreign Espionage Service, Sergei Narishkin, assured that Kuzminov was a “traitor” while the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, stressed that he was not aware that the Spanish authorities informed Moscow about what happened and specified that Kuzminov’s death “is not an issue” that appears on the agenda of the Russian Government. EFE
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