The lion’s den in Spain that the murdered Russian defector Maxim Kuzminov walked into

In front of the building where the Russian pilot Maxim Kuzminov was shot dead, in the residential area of La Cala de Villajoyosa, on Spain’s Mediterranean coast, there is a bar that caters to customers from all over the world and which is run by Eastern Europeans. The owners, who would rather not have the name of their establishment linked to such a gruesome event, say that Kuzminov was never there. Instead, the man who famously defected to Ukraine with his combat helicopter in August, then quietly moved to this corner of Alicante province, reportedly preferred to have breakfast just a hundred meters away, in another establishment whose name its owners also requested not having in print. It was here that Kuzminov would sometimes order a flat white and a toasted piece of bread topped with fresh tomato and sliced ham, a traditional breakfast for the mostly Spanish customers who gather there. “He was a regular guy, he didn’t stand out in any way,” says the owner. “He would come, sit down and not make any conversation.” Perhaps the Russian ex-soldier, accused of treason by his country, had realized at that point that by choosing to hide in this part of the world, he had walked into the lion’s den.

The pilot also preferred to get his groceries at a Spanish supermarket, despite the fact that less than a hundred meters from the crime scene there is an establishment specializing in Eastern European products. Also in the same neighborhood there is a location that the community uses as an Orthodox temple and, under one mile away, the Romanian faithful are building a church of their own. “Russians and Ukrainians are well settled here, and they have all kinds of services available to them,” say Antonio, José and Alberto, three friends who share a table at the bar where the victim sometimes had breakfast. “Maybe it was easy for someone to recognize him...” According to the owner of the establishment, however, “it seems that [Kuzminov] was caught because he was trying to bring his girlfriend over” from his country. Neither that hypothesis nor any other has been confirmed in an investigation that is shrouded in the most absolute secrecy.

At first, Kuzminov’s choice may have seemed like a good idea. In the enclave of La Cala, just 300 meters from the beach, three towns come together, barely separated by a handful of streets: Villajoyosa, Finestrat and Benidorm. The murder occurred on the parking access ramp of the Cala Alta residential complex in Villajoyosa, a town where 1,200 Ukrainians and 800 Russians reside, according to the municipal census. In the province of Alicante as a whole, the 2022 census showed 11,695 Ukrainians and 17,457 Russians, respectively, who tend to live in a few municipalities such as Torrevieja, Villajoyosa and Altea, a small town located just half an hour from La Cala, on the other side of the skyscrapers of Benidorm.

The residential complex where the shooting occurred is a 2006 building whose units were used mostly as holiday homes and languished in the winter. Then the Covid pandemic, the subsequent crisis and the invasion of Ukraine filled it with “foreigners for rent,” in the words of a Valencian couple who live nearby and who also declined to provide their names. “It has picked up a bit and they are building the swimming pool, which they didn’t have before.” Neighbors leave the property in a rush, evading the journalists’ questions. Either they work at home and don’t know anyone in the complex, or they have just arrived in town. Everyone seems determined to forget Kuzminov’s time there.

The only official information about the shooting that ended Kuzminov’s life is that at 4:48 p.m. on February 13, somebody called Spain’s 112 emergency services alerting of an alleged accident, according to sources familiar with the investigation. Local police officers showed up and talked to witnesses who claimed that they had seen a car fleeing at full speed from the area. Inside the private parking lot, officers quickly discovered some bullet casings. They notified the Civil Guard, a national law enforcement agency, which took charge of the investigation. At first the victim was identified as a 33-year-old Ukrainian citizen, but his paperwork turned out to be fake. In reality, it was Kuzminov, the Russian helicopter pilot who defected and surrendered to the Ukrainian army in August 2023.

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