NOA OF THE TOWER

Updated Wednesday, February 21, 2024-02:04

Like a ghost. Surrounded by Russian compatriots, and also by Ukrainians, in a huge housing estate full of nationals from both countries, but without anyone knowing about him - it is even possible, some sources slip,

that he had only been in the area for a few weeks

-.

This is how Maxim Kuzmínov

lived in Villajoyosa (Alicante)

, the 28-year-old Russian Army helicopter pilot who first deserted noisily last August, then was presented by Ukraine as a hero - "I don't want to be an accomplice to Russian crimes," he said -, and finally

he was murdered on February 13, shot five times

, in a garage in the Alicante town.

And like a ghost, Kuzminov continues to occupy space in the news, already dead, because yesterday afternoon the Spanish Ministry of the Interior still did not confirm his identity, although the media took it for granted since the head of the Russian Foreign Espionage Service himself,

Sergei Narishkin

, stated a few hours before that the deceased was "a criminal traitor", who

since his desertion had become "a moral corpse"

.

Every detail of his murder, starting with its authorship - with the possibility of Russian state

action

in the heart of

Europe

- but also the circumstances of the entry of the Russian soldier into the country, can be explosive at a time when Russian-Spanish bilateral relations are going through a very delicate moment, after the summoning of the

Moscow

ambassador in Madrid by Foreign Affairs following another much more notable death: that of the Russian opposition leader

Alexei Navalny

in the IK-3 prison in Jarp, in the Arctic, in circumstances not yet clarified by

Vladimir Putin

's regime

.

While Kuzminov's death yesterday threatened to become a political problem -

Ciudadanos

has asked the European Commission to investigate the murder, and has alerted

Josep Borrell

, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, of the "alarming increase" of cases since the beginning of the invasion of

Ukraine

-, in Villajoyosa secrecy was the tone in the investigation, of which no details have emerged so far, beyond a hypothesis: the civil guards of the

Team Against Organized Crime of Judicial Police

, who have been in charge of the investigations since the 13th and who started from the possibility of settling scores in an area very prone to them due to the presence of a lot of dormant crime, have already turned to a possible operation of the services Russian secrets executed to order.

Kuzminov, whose original fingerprints appeared on the false documentation found on the body, which attributed him to Ukrainian nationality and age 33, was murdered in the La Cala de la Vila urbanization, a residential area of ​​Villajoyosa with 5,300 homes and

where About 8,000 people live there, many of whom are foreigners

. A place very close to

Benidorm

, just 12 kilometers away, perfect for going unnoticed surrounded by Russian and Ukrainian nationals, and where no trace seems to have been left. In huge blocks of 15 or 16 floors, many floors are also used as second homes and only occupied on weekends.

Neighbors speculate that the Russian deserter had only been in the area for a few days. Nobody knew about him, neither in the La Cala neighborhood association,

nor in the Orthodox church of Villajoyosa, nor in the supermarket in the area specializing in Eastern products

, nor in a restaurant run by Eastern Europeans near the garage where he was murdered. . It is also not clear, at the moment, if he lived in the block where he was murdered or was actually participating in a work that was carried out there.

In addition to the possibility that

Russia was behind

Kuzminov

's murder

- the country's government media quickly began to celebrate his death - the event also raises the possibility that the helicopter pilot, who was injured in the leg during his desertion, and awarded half a million euros by the Ukrainian State, which exhibited him as a war trophy,

he enjoyed some type of state protection in Spain

. Of a kind of covert political refugee status.

The Government spokesperson,

Pilar Alegría

, clarified the issue yesterday, at the press conference after the Council of Ministers, with a simple "we must let the researchers work." It is not known how

Kuzminov

could have arrived in Spain, nor how long he had been in the country.

What does seem clear to police observers - and hence the idea of ​​subcontracting the murder - is that the

modus operandi

of the operation responds to what is usual in organized crime: five shots fired, subsequent escape of the attackers in the car itself of the victim, later abandoned in the nearby town of

El Campello

, and burned before being found hours later by members of the State Security Corps and Forces.