Media in Spain and other countries reported on the 13th of this month, about a former Russian military soldier who surrendered to the Ukrainian side in August last year as a pilot of a Russian military Mil-8 helicopter, at an underground parking lot in a town near Alicante in southeastern Spain. It was reported on the 19th that he was found dead after being shot by someone.
According to media reports, the man who died was Maxim Kuzminov, 28, a former Russian military soldier who had moved from Ukraine to Spain using a fake passport.
Last October, Russian state television broadcast an interview in which a member of the special forces of Russia's Defense Ministry's GRU (General Directorate of Military Staff Intelligence) said about the former soldier, ``We will definitely find him and punish the traitor.''
On the 20th, Director of Foreign Intelligence Service Naryshkin, a close confidant of President Putin, told Russian media on the 20th that the ex-soldier was found dead, saying, ``This traitorous criminal had already committed his dirty crimes when he was planning them.'' "It was morally dead," he said, harshly criticizing his surrender to the Ukrainian side.
The background behind the killing of the former soldier is not known, but in Russia, on the 16th of this month, it was announced that Mr. Navalny, an opposition leader who had criticized the Putin administration, had died, and Western media We are also interested in reporting on the deaths of former soldiers.