Kuzmenov was killed in a hail of gunfire, then was run over by attackers in his own car who then used the vehicle to flee, according to Spanish authorities, Ukrainian security officials and Spanish media reports.
The attack lacked the subtleties often associated with Russian assassination plots. He was not poisoned with a toxin used to make weapons, nor was he found in the wreckage of a plane that fell from the sky. However, the message behind Kuzminov's death is the same as it was during most of Russian President Vladimir Putin's two-decade term, according to Western officials and security experts.
“It's a reminder to everyone who lives in exile and actively opposes the regime, they are all on someone's list,” said Eugene Romer, a former senior US intelligence official and director of the Russia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Copies of this letter have been relayed repeatedly in recent months. The death of former Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin — whose plane exploded en route to St. Petersburg weeks after he led an aborted military mutiny — showed that old, close ties with Putin do not provide protection.
The death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in a remote Arctic penal colony last week suggests that even those serving multi-year prison sentences — often in solitary confinement and stripped of all real ability to threaten the state — may not survive.
Kuzminov falls into a category that Putin, a former KGB officer, views with particular contempt: traitors from within the military and security services. His presidency was marked by a series of elaborate operations that seemed aimed at meting out the most painful punishments on those accused of turning against Russia on behalf of the West.
Those targeted included Alexander Litvinenko, a former officer in Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB, who died after polonium poisoning in London in 2006, according to British investigators; and Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military officer who survived an attack that left him and his daughter seriously ill from exposure to the nerve agent Novichok, known to be produced only by a Russian laboratory.
Navalny narrowly survived an assassination attempt by Russian security officials using the same substance in 2020. After recovering in Germany, he returned to Russia in 2021 and was arrested upon arrival.
Russia's ability to carry out lethal operations outside its borders is believed to have been greatly eroded by waves of expulsions of Russian spies from the country's embassies. Europe alone has expelled more than 400 suspected Russian intelligence officers since the massive invasion of Ukraine two years ago, devastating European spy networks across Europe.
Officials said Kuzminov's killing showed that Russia retains some capabilities in Europe and has found ways to adapt. “They made mistakes but they learned lessons,” said a senior Ukrainian intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
In contrast to the complex plots against the Skripals and Navalny, which were carried out by officers working directly for Russian intelligence services, the attack on Kuzminov in Spain resembled a mob attack. The nature of the killing has raised speculation that Russia has turned to criminal networks to compensate for its limited operational presence across Europe.
If so, Kuzminov's decision to leave Ukraine for Spain's Mediterranean coast may have been a particularly risky, if not reckless, move.
The Alicante region has been linked for decades to Russian organized crime gangs, according to officials and government reports. It also has a notable Russian expatriate population – home to up to 16,000 of the approximately 80,000 Russians residing in Spain as of 2022, according to government figures.
Spanish authorities have launched intermittent operations to root out Russian gangs, including one that occupied investigators for seven years before culminating in widespread arrests and property seizures three years ago.
The case, dubbed “Operation Testudo,” revealed a “large-scale criminal network” linked to Russia, and included “murder, drug trafficking, arms smuggling, human trafficking and extortion,” according to a Europol press release. Given the existence of such criminal networks, “Russia can recruit criminals but not.” [rely on] The Ukrainian official said that “professional intelligence agents” were responsible for carrying out the killing of Kuzminov.
It is not clear when Kuzminov arrived in Villajoyosa, a village along part of the Mediterranean coast known as a concentration of organ transplants from… Russia. He appears to have been living in Spain under a false identity and a Ukrainian passport, supposedly provided by the Ukrainian military intelligence service, which promoted his defection last year on board a Mi-8 transport helicopter loaded with valuable Russian aircraft components as a propaganda coup. .
Kozmenov appeared in a documentary sponsored by Kiev, describing his decision to defect after negotiating a deal in which Ukraine helped secure the transfer of his family members from Russia and agreed to pay him $500,000.
It is not clear whether Kuzminov's family members moved with him to Spain. Ukrainian security officials said there were indications that Kuzminov may have put his security at risk by contacting his ex-girlfriend in Russia, an assertion that could not be confirmed.
A former US intelligence official said Kuzminov's killing raises questions about “whether Western intelligence services have done enough to encourage Russian defections and provide security for defectors,” something that “should be a top priority for a variety of obvious reasons.”
The Western response so far to Navalny's death appears to confirm the lack of retaliatory options against Russia, which has defied expectations in its ability to withstand Western arms shipments to Ukraine, economic sanctions and diplomatic expulsions over the past two years.
Britain announced on Wednesday that it would punish Russia for Navalny's killing by imposing economic sanctions on “the heads of the penal colony in the Arctic where Alexei Navalny was killed.” President Biden said that the US sanctions package is imminent.
Serhiy Morgunov in Kiev, Suad Mikhnit and Shane Harris in Washington, and Isabella Carril in Madrid contributed to this report.
