Down Angle Symbol A symbol in the form of an angle pointing downwards. Russian pilot Maksym Kuzminov during a press conference with the Ukrainian press on September 5, 2023 in Kiev, Ukraine. Vitalii Nosach/Global Images Ukraine/Getty Images
- Maksym Kuzminov was a Russian helicopter pilot who fled to Ukraine in August.
- Kuzminov lived in Spain under a false identity until he was killed in February.
- An official investigating the killing said the Kremlin may have been involved in the killing, WSJ reported.
Maksym Kuzminov, the 28-year-old Russian helicopter pilot who fled to Ukraine in August and later moved to Spain, was shot five times less than 500 feet from a local police station, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Kuzminov suffered a harrowing fate in February when he was killed in the small coastal town of Villajoyosa, where he was living under a false identity.
Speaking to Kuzminov's neighbors, witnesses and authorities, The Journal reported new details about the Russian pilot's defection last year and his Feb. 13 death.
The report said Kuzminov's body was found less than 500 feet from a police station and authorities could have responded within minutes. But by then Kuzminov was probably already dead, witnesses told the newspaper.
“When I called 911, I already knew the man was dead,” the property manager of the condo where Kuzminov lived told The Journal.
A medic found five small-caliber shots, one of which hit his heart directly, revealing the accuracy with which the gunman killed Kuzminov, the report said.
A suspect has yet to be identified, but an official involved in the investigation told The Journal that investigators believe the Kremlin was involved in the pilot's killing.
Kuzminov's fate was widely seen as part of a series of mysterious Russian deaths that have raised suspicions about the Kremlin's efforts to eliminate Russian leader Vladimir Putin's critics.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group that staged a mutiny against the Russian military leadership, died in a plane crash outside a Moscow airport in August.
Western intelligence officials and a former Russian intelligence officer told the Journal last year that Nikolai Patrushev, a close confidant of Putin, had orchestrated his death.
In early February, Alexei Navalny, one of Putin's most vocal political opponents, was found dead in the Arctic penal colony where he was serving a 19-year sentence. A medical report suggested that Navalny died of natural causes, but that has not stopped many, including Navalny's family and the Biden administration, from believing that a crime may have been involved.
“Make no mistake, Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death,” President Joe Biden told reporters in a Feb. 16 news conference.
After reports of Kuzminov's death, Moscow's foreign intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin appeared to support the Russian pilot's fate.
“This traitor and criminal became a moral corpse the moment he planned his dirty and terrible crime,” Naryshkin told the Russian state news agency TASS about a week after Kuzminov’s death.