Ex-Ukrainian official found dead in Spanish swimming pool

Telegraph

22-07-2025

A former Ukrainian official has been found dead in a swimming pool in Spain, in the same complex where a Russian defector was assassinated last year.
The body of Ihor Hrushevsky, who was a senior official in Kyiv's interior ministry, was discovered on June 29 at the Cala Alta complex in Villajoyosa, Alicante, a resort home to a large Russian and Ukrainian community.
He was found floating in the water, with blood on one ear, after allegedly taking a late-night swim.
Spanish police described the death as accidental, possibly caused by heart attack or seizure.
However, residents are alarmed as it follows the murder of Maksim Kuzminov, a former Russian military pilot, at the same resort less than 18 months ago.
Mr Kuzminov, 28, was shot dead outside a garage in February 2024, six months after flying his helicopter across the front lines to Ukraine for a £400,000 reward.
His murder, which is still being investigated by a court in Villajoyosa, is suspected to have been committed by Russian agents in revenge for his defection.
Mr Hrushevsky, who was 61, is reported to have recently purchased a flat in the complex after retiring to Spain.
He was the head of the organised crime department in the central Cherkasy and Kirovohrad regions, according to the Kyiv Post. The unit was disbanded during police reforms in 2015.
'They're saying it was a heart attack. What is clear is that he didn't drown because the water only comes up to my neck, and I'm a shorty,' Blanca, a resident of the complex, told online newspaper El Español.
Another resident told the outlet that Mr Hrushevsky has been living in the complex for a few months and kept a low profile.
'Anything can happen between Ukrainians and Russians,' he said when asked about the former police officer's possible cause of death.
Ukraine's foreign affairs ministry said that, according to its consulate in Barcelona, Mr Hrushevsky's death occurred as a result of drowning.
The consulate provided assistance in preparing the relevant documents for the repatriation of the body to Ukraine, the ministry added.
The discovery of Mr Hrushevsky's body is the latest of a string of suspicious deaths involving Ukrainians and Russians in Spain since the 2022 Russian invasion.
In May, Andriy Portnov, a former Ukrainian pro-Russian politician, was shot in broad daylight in Madrid.
Mr Portnov, who was a leading official under Viktor Yanukovych, the Kremlin-friendly former Ukrainian president, was dropping off his children at school when he was shot nine times by a hitman.
Spanish police have made no arrests in relation to the killing. The suspect is believed to have fled from the scene in a car.
In April 2022, weeks after the start of the war in Ukraine, Sergey Protosenya, a multi-millionaire Russian gas company executive, was found hanging from railings outside his luxury villa on the Costa Brava. The bodies of his wife and daughter were discovered alongside him with multiple stab wounds.
Mr Protosenya had been deputy chairman of Novatek, a natural gas producer, since 2015. He was one of around eight Russian oligarchs whose bodies were found in suspicious circumstances in the six months after Putin's invasion of Ukraine.