Russian defector’s violent death in Spain seen as warning to Ukraine war critics

The apparent violent death of a Russian pilot whose dramatic defection was touted by Ukraine highlights the safety risks of those who loudly resist Moscow's invasion of its neighbour.

Maxim Kuzminov flew a Russian Mi-8 helicopter into Ukrainian territory last year and then defected. Six months after that operation was made public, Ukrainian authorities say he has died in Spain.

A man's body was found riddled with bullets inside a garage in southeastern Spain on Feb. 13. Police believe Kuzminov is the victim, though an official identification has not yet been made.

In Moscow's first comments on the case since news emerged of the killing, the head of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service said the dead pilot had betrayed his country.

"This traitor and criminal became a moral corpse at the very moment when he planned his dirty and terrible crime," Sergei Naryshkin was quoted as saying by TASS news agency.

Western leaders say Russia frequently assassinates those it deems traitors abroad. Moscow says the West has not provided evidence to support such assertions.

Expats fear further reprisals

Yulia Taran, deputy head of a group called Free Russians in Spain, said the group had assisted other Russian defectors over the past two years, and it was common practice for them to assume false identities "in order to not be found by [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's agents."

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"I think [defectors] are very worried now, and let's hope that Spanish police and secret services do well their job to prevent" any further persecution, she said.

Ukrainska Pravda newspaper quoted the head of Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council, Oleksiy Danilov, as saying Kyiv had advised Kuzminov to stay in Ukraine, where he "would have been protected."

Kuzminov's defection to Ukraine was presented last year as a major coup for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's government. Appearing at a news conference in Kyiv, Kuzminov said he could not understand why his "beloved motherland" would enter into a war with Ukraine.

Other members of the air crew died during his defection. Moscow said Kuzminov killed them; he said the soldiers panicked and fled, and may have been subsequently killed. The New York Times, in reporting on Kuzminov's death, referred to a Ukrainian-disseminated version of events that said his fellow air crew members were shot dead by Ukrainian fighters after trying to force Kuzminov to reverse course.

Deadly crash after attempted coup

Around the time in August 2023 that Ukraine first revealed the helicopter-and-defection episode, another wartime story was making news.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the chief of the paramilitary Wagner Group, died in a plane crash, just two months after leading a short-lived mutiny that saw Wagner fighters drive across the Russian border.

Prigozhin had been critical of how Moscow was handling the war effort in Ukraine. Moscow denied involvement in Prigozhin's death.

TV journalist sentenced in absentia

Moscow has punished some of the most vocal domestic critics of its invasion of Ukraine, which began on Feb. 24, 2022.

In March 2022, Russian journalist Marina Ovsyannikova held up a homemade sign protesting the war in the background of a Channel One broadcast. She was fined. But she held another protest months later and was charged with spreading false information about Russia's armed forces.

Ovsyannikova later fled the country and last October, a Russian court handed her an eight and a half year sentence in absentia. Soon after, Ovsyannikova fell ill in Paris and feared she had been poisoned — though she later said blood tests had not proven that.

Weeks after the war's start, another Russian journalist, Dmitry Muratov, had paint thrown on him while he was on a train from Moscow to Samara. Initial reports on the attack suggested Muratov had been targeted over his paper's coverage of the war.

In September 2022, Russian authorities stripped Muratov's paper, the Novaya Gazeta, of its media licence and a year later declared Muratov to be a foreign agent.

Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian opposition activist, had publicly condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine in speeches in the U.S. and Europe. He was taken into custody in April 2022 and received a 25-year sentence after being convicted of treason and other offences the following year.

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Violent deaths

During Putin's years in power, prominent Kremlin critics have repeatedly died under murky circumstances, including on Russian soil.

Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister of Russia, was shot to death on a bridge near the Kremlin nine years ago this month. The opposition politician had been a sharp critic of Putin and thousands of his supporters attended his funeral.

In 2006, Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist with the Novaya Gazeta, was shot to death inside an elevator at the Moscow building where she lived. Her coverage had been critical of Putin and his government's campaign in Chechnya.

The most recent example is Alexei Navalny, who died in a Russian prison last week. Muratov called Navalny's death "murder," and told Reuters he believed prison conditions had led to the opposition leader's demise.

Critics living outside Russia's borders have also met violent fates well before the current Ukraine conflict.

Denis Voronenkov, a former Russian lawmaker, was shot dead in Kyiv in March 2017. Ukraine's then-president Petro Poroshenko cast blame on Russia, but the Kremlin rejected the allegation.

There was also the poisoning of former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko who died in a London hospital in November 2006, after drinking tea laced with a radioactive isotope. Moscow denied involvement in his death, but the European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2021 that Russia was responsible for his killing.