Kuzminov was killed in a barrage of gunfire and then run over with his own vehicle by assailants who then used the car to escape, according to Spanish authorities, Ukraine security officials and Spanish media reports.
The attack lacked the elaborate touches often associated with Russian assassination plots. He was not poisoned with a weapons-grade toxin or found in the wreckage of an aircraft that plunged from the sky. Yet the message behind Kuzminov’s death is the same as it has been through much of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s two-decade tenure, according to Western security officials and experts.
“It is a reminder for everyone who is in exile and actively in opposition to the regime — they are all on somebody’s list,” said Eugene Rumer, a former senior U.S. intelligence official who directs the Russia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Versions of that message have been relayed repeatedly in recent months. The death of former Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeniy Prigozhin — whose plane exploded on its way to St. Petersburg weeks after he led an aborted military insurrection — showed that old, close ties with Putin are no protection.
The death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in a remote Arctic penal colony last week signaled that even those serving multiyear sentences — often in solitary confinement and stripped of all meaningful ability to threaten the state — may not survive.
Kuzminov fell into a category that Putin, a former KGB officer, regards with particular scorn: traitors from within the military and security services. His presidency has been marked by a series of elaborate operations that seemed aimed at inflicting the most painful punishment possible on those accused of turning against Russia for the West.
Those targeted include Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, officer who died after being poisoned with polonium 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 gravely ill from exposure to a nerve agent, Novichok, that is known to be produced only by a Russian lab.
Navalny narrowly survived an attempt on his own life by Russian security officials using the same substance in 2020. After recuperating in Germany, he returned to Russia in 2021 and was arrested upon his arrival.
Russia’s ability to carry out lethal operations beyond its borders was believed to have been substantially 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 full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago.
Kuzminov’s killing showed that Russia retains some capabilities in Europe despite the decimation of its spy networks, and has found ways to adapt, officials said. “They have made mistakes but learned lessons,” said a senior Ukrainian intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
In contrast to the intricate plots against Skripal and Navalny carried out by officers working directly for Russia’s intelligence services, the attack on Kuzminov in Spain more closely resembled a mob hit. The nature of the killing has prompted speculation that Russia has turned to criminal networks to compensate for its curtailed 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 for decades been associated with Russian organized-crime syndicates, according to officials and government reports. It also has a prominent Russian expatriate population — home to as many as 16,000 of the roughly 80,000 Russians who resided in Spain as of 2022, according to government figures.
Spanish authorities have mounted intermittent operations to root out the Russian syndicates, including one that occupied investigators for seven years before culminating in sweeping arrests and property seizures three years ago.
The case, dubbed “Operation Testudo,” exposed a “large-scale criminal network” linked to Russia that involved “murder, drug trafficking, arms trafficking, trafficking of human beings and extortion,” according to…
Read More: A killing in Spain points to Russia and Putin’s sense of impunity