Russian defector gunned down in Spain 'contacted his ex' as body found riddled with bullets in underground car park
21 February 2024, 13:59 | Updated: 21 February 2024, 14:39
A Russian military pilot who defected to Ukraine before being murdered in an underground car park in Spain may have been killed because of his ‘reckless’ lifestyle.
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Spanish police are investigating whether the Russian mafia and Moscow might have been involved in the killing of Maksim Kuzminov - and whether he was targeted because he used prostitutes and was a drug user who was known to police on the Costa Blanca.
He was found dead - riddled with half a dozen bullets in an underground garage in the town of Villajoyosa near Benidorm.
His body was run over by his own car, which was later found abandoned and burnt out in the nearby town of El Campello on the Costa Blanca coast.
He had been living under a new identity in Spain and was setting about building a new life for himself.
Spanish media reported that he had invited an ex-girlfriend to Spain before he was found dead.
Kuzminov’s body was found by the building’s caretaker on the afternoon of February 13 on the ramp of the communal garage of the La Cala residential complex.
“I found the body and if I had been there 15 seconds earlier I could have been dead too,” the caretaker said.
Kuzminov’s identity was confirmed by Spanish police after carrying out fingerprint tests.
Russia’s military had sentenced Kuzminov to death for “treason.”
Two crew members on his aircraft were killed while attempting to flee after he landed in Ukraine. Their families had demanded he paid for his actions with his life.
“This traitor and criminal became a moral corpse at the very moment when he planned his dirty and terrible crime,” Sergei Naryshkin, the director of Russia’s SVR intelligence service said yesterday.
