The first person to spot the body was an elderly Spanish man who mistook it for a drunk passed out at the entrance of the parking garage.

Then he saw the blood darkening the dead man’s chest — and a white car flashing past him, speeding up the ramp and into the night.

“He had at least six bullet wounds. He was wearing something like a jacket,” the man recalled. “You could see blood.”

The dead man was carrying a fake Ukrainian passport, identifying him as Ihor Schevchenko, 33 years old, so it took a few days for news of his true identity to trickle out.

At first, the rumors flitted through Russia-affiliated news outlets and posts on the messaging app Telegram. Finally, on Feb. 19, 2024, nearly a week after the body was found, Ukrainian officials confirmed it belonged to Maxim Kuzminov, a former Russian helicopter pilot who had carried out a high-profile defection the summer before, flying his vehicle across the front line and delivering it to Ukraine.

Celebrated with fanfare in Kyiv, Kuzminov had been rewarded with money and promised protection, even as Russia declared him a traitor and called for his death.

And so the question then became: What was Kuzminov doing in Spain? Ukraine had hoped his defection would serve as an example for others brave enough to resist the Russian regime. So how did he come to end up dead, bleeding out on the floor of a parking garage?

The making of a defector

Kuzminov was born in Arsenyev, a town located near the Sea of Japan, just about as far away from Ukraine as it’s possible to get and still be in Russia.

Russian media reports say he came from humble beginnings; little is known about his father, but his mother was reportedly a seamstress who at one point dabbled in business with nearby China and South Korea. Both were largely absent, according to the reports. 

Kuzminov’s main parental figure was his grandfather, a decorated military pilot who would take his six-year-old grandchild along on his flights, transmitting his passion to his young charge. Kuzminov attended a military academy in the city of Syzran and, after graduation, he joined the Russian armed forces as a helicopter pilot. 

When Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Kuzminov suddenly found himself confronted by the reality of war — transporting troops, cargo and military equipment in service of a war he would later say he didn’t believe in.

“When all this began on Feb. 24, I cried, I was scared,” Kuzminov recounted in September after his defection. “How could we start a war against such a beautiful country? I went to church, lit candles with one wish: that everything would be over as soon as possible.”

It was sometime around the first anniversary of the invasion that Kuzminov started secretly communicating with Ukrainian intelligence.

As part of an operation called “Synytsia,” Ukraine had offered rewards of between $10,000 to $1 million to Russian soldiers who defected with their equipment.

Outnumbered and under-equipped, Kyiv hoped that it could weaken Russia from within, by convincing the Kremlin’s soldiers to turn their backs on the war effort.

Kuzminov was among the first to take up the offer. 

On Aug. 9, 2023, Kuzminov put his plan into action. Lifting off in a Mi-8 transport helicopter from the Kursk airport near Ukraine, he flew toward the border, keeping low to the ground and maintaining radio silence.

The two other crewmembers on board, with whom Kuzminov had only shortly before hung out at a lakeside barbecue, had no idea what was happening.

What took place next is disputed. According to the version put forward by Ukrainian officials, Kuzminov was wounded in the leg as the helicopter crossed the border, most likely by Russian small-arms fire. Once he landed, his two companions tried to flee back to Russia, only to be shot by Ukrainian soldiers.

The version put forward by some Russian state media claims that Kuzminov killed the two soldiers himself before landing.

Regardless of what actually happened, his defection provided Ukraine with a public relations bonanza and Kyiv mined it for all it was worth. 

 “This operation will have consequences for the moral and psychological state of Russia, as well as for defense,” Andriy Yusov, a Ukrainian military intelligence official, told reporters.

Over the next few weeks, the baby-faced pilot held a press conference, gave multiple interviews and was featured in a documentary. As promised, Kuzminov was given $500,000. 

During a press conference on Sept. 5, 2023, Kuzminov’s first public appearance after his defection, the Russian pilot appeared nervous, addressing a large room filled with news-hungry reporters.

“What was the impetus for the decision to switch to the side of Ukraine?” he said. “I decided for myself that this was the most brutal crime. And I simply will not take part in this.”

Shortly after, a Ukrainian blogger posted another interview with Kuzminov on YouTube. Dressed in a gray denim jacket, a white T-shirt and shorts, which revealed a bandage on his left leg, Kuzminov told his interviewer: “I love my country, Russia. But I don’t like my state.”

In Russia, any criticism of the Kremlin or the war is invariably demonized as an attempt to undermine the country from within. Kuzminov’s words — and the pair of Captain America socks pulled halfway up his shins —  were seen as tantamount to a declaration of war.

At home, his defection turned him into the most hated man in the country — not just for switching sides but also for the deaths of the two other servicemen on his helicopter. Within days, death threats flooded his social media accounts. A man claiming to be his father publicly disowned him. State television lambasted him as “the traitor Kuzminov.” 

In October, shortly after his defection, a flagship news program aired a segment featuring masked men it identified as GRU agents planning to hunt him down. “The order has already been given,” the narrator of the segment said. “It is just a matter of time before it will be carried out.”

Asked at the press conference how he felt about the threat to his life, Kuzminov answered: “I am a very religious person. God gave me life; he will take it away. Yes, it is scary, but fear is humiliating. I’m not afraid of anything anymore.

“As for moving somewhere in Europe, there is a possibility, I will think about it too,” he said.

Death in Villajoyosa

Less than half a year later, unbeknownst to the world, Kuzminov was living in Villajoyosa, a beach town of about 35,000 people about an hour from Alicante on Spain’s southeastern coast. 

By all appearances, he had turned a page on his past, leading a life that to him, who’d grown up in the impoverished Russian province, must have felt tantamount to that of a rock star. The stresses of his life in Russia and the war appeared to be behind him.  

But if he had moved to the Spanish Riviera expecting safety, he didn’t find it. Many of the details of Kuzminov’s assassination remain murky. But according to media reports and interviews conducted by POLITICO, he was gunned down by two attackers in the parking garage of his apartment building.

Kuzminov apparently tried to run and made it to the ramp before he collapsed. In escaping, his killers ran over him with a car, possibly Kuzminov’s. The Spanish Civil Guard said they found the burned out vehicle days later, about 20 kilometers from town.

The murder sent a shock wave through the region, which markets itself as a fairyland of rest and amusement for foreigners. 

Spain was quick to point the finger eastwards, with Spanish intelligence services telling the newspaper El País that Moscow likely tasked its hit men to carry out the assassination. But Spanish authorities showed little enthusiasm in digging further.

Mark Galeotti, head of the London-based Mayak Intelligence consultancy firm and a leading Russia expert, said Kuzminov’s death looks much more like “an organized crime killing.” But, he added, “It seems entirely plausible that then the Russian state would have reached out to the gangsters and more or less said, ‘We need you to do something for us.’”

Villajoyosa has a sizable community of Russians and Ukrainians. The town has a Russian Orthodox church and, in the very center, a large Russian supermarket. 

The Cala Alta residential complex where Kuzminov lived in the weeks before his death and where he was killed sits about 10 minutes from the seaside. It’s a gated community made up of tall, white, balconied apartment buildings, a pool and clay-colored paths where residents and their pets mingle among the palm trees and patches of grass.

When POLITICO visited the complex earlier this year, half of the apartments seemed to be empty. Most doorbells rung unanswered. The units that were occupied mostly hosted vacationers looking for a few weeks of escape.

It quickly became clear no one wanted to be reminded of the crime. “Nothing ever happens here,” went one typical comment. 

A caretaker at Cala Alta, who was the second person to arrive on the crime scene, said he only spoke to Kuzminov once: when the former pilot asked him where he could dispose of the debris from renovating his apartment. After that, he saw him occasionally around the complex. Kuzminov was always wearing dark clothes, hoodies and hats, as if he was trying to go unnoticed, the caretaker said.

Several people said that the former pilot was a regular at a sports bar across the street from Cala Alta. But inside the establishment, nobody seemed to remember him. Around town, when people were asked whether they had seen Kuzminov, they shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders. 

There were a few exceptions. Workers at a local grocery store recalled him coming in on occasion. A waiter at a nearby restaurant said he would sometimes see him around town.

“I saw him many times, he wasn’t very talkative,” a chef in a restaurant close to Kuzminov’s apartment said. “He made a big mistake coming here to live.” 

Across the street from the garage where Kuzminov was shot, a Russian man was having drinks in a café with a friend. “I think he deserved it,” he said, taking a slug of his beer.

The end of Maxim Kuzminov

Outside Villajoyosa, the news of Kuzminov’s death has been met with reactions ranging from gleeful celebrations to dismissive shrugs.

Contrary to the goal of Ukraine’s defection program, onlookers are drawing a number of lessons from his assassination — and not the ones that Kyiv had hoped for.

One of Kuzminov’s childhood friends in Russia, who asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons, described Kuzminov as “humble, good-hearted and very naive.” He said the former pilot had a “pliable temperament,” and that he likely deserted because “someone exerted pressure on him and he was afraid.” The promise of a big reward was likely also a big factor, he said. 

After the defection, Kuzminov’s friends and relatives had been interrogated by the Russian security services and made to take lie detector tests, the friend added. 

He added that, as far as he knew, Kuzminov’s entire group of friends from Russia had cut him off. “In our circle, we all have a very negative reaction to what he did,” he said. “Of course, there’s our childhood bond, but what he did overshadows that. No one really mourned his death.”

Outside the country, Russians — especially those critical of the government — have noted with alarm the ease with which two killers slipped in and out of Villajoyosa and got away with murder.

Spanish authorities have washed their hands of any responsibility. Intelligence sources told El País they did not even know that Kuzminov was in the country and that they had not been informed of his arrival. 

To this day, Spain’s Civil Guard won’t officially confirm that the body that was found was Kuzminov’s. Requests for interviews with the Villajoyosa police went unanswered. Half a year after the killing, there are no solid leads, or at least none that have been made public. Like the citizens of Villajoyosa, authorities in the country seem to be treating the case as something best forgotten quickly.

That has reinforced the perception, fed by a series of incidents on British and continental soil, that the Kremlin can reach into Europe and target its enemies with impunity. 

Alexei, a 49-year-old Russian businessman who emigrated to Spain after facing pressure for his political views, said he feels “in danger, and I think many do.”

For Ukraine, Kuzminov’s murder turned what should have been a major propaganda victory into a defeat. If Kyiv’s most highly touted defector did not live to see the anniversary of his desertion, how eager will other Russians be to cross over. Rather than showcase the benefits of switching sides, Kuzminov’s story ended up playing into the Kremlin’s hands by illustrating the mortal danger it entails.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the story appears to be one that Kyiv would rather forget.

A Ukrainian intelligence official suggested that Kuzminov himself was in large part to blame for his death: The program under which he defected offered the right to keep his identity a secret.  

“Kuzminov wanted money, so he got the money,” the official told POLITICO in March. “We gave him half a million dollars. He would have been under protection in Ukraine, but he came one day and told [us] he wanted to go abroad.”

“We warned him that it was dangerous,” the official said. “But he said he wanted to go [to Spain] anyway. How would you imagine we could protect him? Kuzminov goes through a beach in Spain in flip-flops and with $500k under his armpit and our two-armed fighters accompany him? That is impossible outside our jurisdiction.”

For a brief moment, Kuzminov’s defection thrust him into the global spotlight. A young man from Russia’s impoverished periphery, he spent the last months of his life in comfort he could have only dreamed of as a child. 

In his death, he seems fated to sink back into obscurity.

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