Russian defector Maxim Kuzminov shot dead in Villajoyosa (Alicante)

Maxim Kuzminov was a 28-year-old Russian military helicopter pilot who defected to Ukraine on 9 August 2023, flying a Mi-8 across the front line after being recruited online by Ukrainian intelligence. Ukraine rewarded him with roughly 500,000 dollars and a new Ukrainian identity. His handlers reportedly warned him not to leave the country for fear that Moscow would send a team after him. He nonetheless settled in Villajoyosa, near Alicante in southern Spain, living under a false name.

On 13 February 2024, Kuzminov's body was found in the parking area of his residential complex in Villajoyosa. According to reporting on the Spanish investigation, he was shot multiple times, dying from several bullet wounds, and his body was then run over by a vehicle. Investigators searched for two suspects who fled in a vehicle later found burned out in a nearby town. Spanish authorities initially said only that a person had been found dead with several gunshot wounds, and worked to confirm the victim's true identity given his false documents.

Sources cited in the reporting described the perpetrators as highly professional. Ukrainian military intelligence confirmed his death without specifying a cause. No suspect has been publicly charged, and Spanish investigators have not issued a formal attribution.

Western and Spanish intelligence officials, as reported, suspect Russian state involvement in Kuzminov's killing, an assessment supported by his profile as a high-value defector, the apparent professionalism of the operation, and prior Russian state-television claims that Moscow had ordered him eliminated. This remains an assessment, not a judicial finding: no charge or proven attribution exists. Russia's denials and the SVR director's hostile public remark about Kuzminov are context, not proof. The case fits a broader pattern of suspicious deaths of Russians who broke with the Kremlin while living abroad.