MOSCOW, February 22 Killed pilot Maxim Kuzminov entered Spain with a fake passport, posing as Igor Shevchenko, writes the newspaper El Periodico.
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"The passport in Kuzminov’s possession was issued on September 22 last year. It states that it belongs to a native of Donetsk, born on September 15, 1990, that is, he is 33 years old — five years older than he actually was,” the material says.
As journalists indicated, the defector entered Spanish territory on February 13. Now the country's state security service is conducting an investigation to find out who exactly gave him the forged document.
On Monday, media reported that a body, presumably that of Kuzminov, was found in the municipality of Villajoyos in Spain. A representative of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine confirmed his death to the RBC-Ukraine publication, and later the Spanish police did the same. The Efe agency wrote, citing the Spanish Civil Guard, that Kuzminov received six gunshot wounds, and then a car drove over his body. At the same time, the department’s press service stated that the investigation into the murder, the victim of which could have been a defector, is classified, and the details will be reported to the authorities of another country.
As Ukrainian media and Telegram channels wrote last year, Russian pilot Maxim Kuzminov in the summer he hijacked a Mi-8 military helicopter from Kursk to Ukraine. In this case, two crew members died. The defector himself gave a press conference in September, at which he stated that he contacted Ukrainian intelligence on his own initiative.
According to him, the operation was discussed for about six months. As Kuzminov stated, on the day he hijacked the helicopter, two colleagues were with him; they were unarmed and could not resist. The defector claimed that the crew members allegedly “began to be afraid,” “behaved a little aggressively,” and “ran out of the helicopter towards the border.” According to Kuzminov, their further fate is unknown to him, but “as follows from the media, it is possible that they were liquidated.”
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