The video surveillance cameras installed in the garage of the La Vila Joiosa urbanization where the Russian pilot Maksym Kuzminov was shot dead, recorded the car with the two assassins who murdered him.
The Alicante Civil Guard has reviewed these recordings, in which there are also images of the perpetrators outside the vehicle, but apparently, they are not of sufficient quality to be able to clearly identify them.
The victim posed as Ihor (or Igor) Shevchenko to the Spanish authorities, but it was a false name entered in the Ukrainian passport GG843153 which he held. In the document, he appears with his features unaltered, with the scars and features he had after crossing into Ukraine, when piloting the Mi-8 helicopter in which he deserted from the front line, surrendering to the Kiev forces at a base in Kharkiv.
The Russian ex-combatant entered Spain last October with an passport and fictitious identity. It was a name provided by Ukrainian authorities, according to the main hypothesis from State Security sources. He arrived after a period of interrogation, having recovered from wounds and shelter by the Ukrainian Defence Forces, with his trip to Spain camouflaged among the large Ukrainian migration.
However, the Civil Guard has still not confirmed that the body it picked up on February 13 is that of Kuzminov. The document he was in possession of was issued last September 22 and describes him as a citizen of Donetsk born on September 15, 1990; that is, 33 years of age, five years older than he really was.
State Security is investigating whether it was the Kyiv government that provided him with a false identity, and who in Spain knew of this circumstance. According to the Minister of Defence, Margarita Robles, the Spanish Government was not aware of the alleged presence in Spain of the defecting Russian pilot. Robles stressed last week that Kuzminov “came to Spain freely.”
Kuzminov was staying in an area of the Costa Blanca with numerous Ukrainians… and Russians, and this despite the fact that he was not exactly an anonymous character, due to the media coverage that Ukraine gave to his change of side, decided, it would seem, out of his opposition to the war.
His desertion cost the lives of two other crew members who were with him in the aircraft, and who were shot in Kharkiv for not surrendering. And that circumstance, in the face of painful pressure from families in Moscow, led Russian television to announce that his desertion would not go unpunished. The head of the Russian foreign espionage service described him last Tuesday as a ” traitor and criminal.”
The “modus operandi” of the crime is another relevant aspect. It is not, due to its lack of professionalism, the style of Russian secret service agents: there were eight shots, of which two missed him. “An executor from the GRU (Russian military spy service) shoots you in the chest and another in the head and immediately disappears with a previously prepared means of escape,” explained one of the sources consulted in State Security.
Kuzminov’s body was found on the ramp leading up to the second floor of the basement, where the shooting began, on the first floor of the garage of the development. A neighbour, of Spanish nationality, came across the body when he was driving his car, and raised the alarm. This same witness saw the car leaving with the two murderers, and just fifteen minutes later the vehicle was found on fire in a mountainous area of El Campello.
The forensic examination of the body revealed five or six bullet holes. Most entered through the victim’s left side and some exited through the chest. The pilot was not shot head-on by the two assassins, nor was he shot in the head. The body has almost a dozen holes that respond to the entrances and exits of the projectiles. In addition, a car passed over the Russian driver’s arm, as it was driven away.
The crime in La Vila suggests to State Security sources the possible existence of a security violation… amplified in its effects because Russian media have widely disseminated it, in a methodical manner, for three days. The sources consulted, however, do not rule out the possibility that the murder of Maxim Kuzminov was the work of common criminals or members of organized crime, and not the tale of a defecting spy.
