Mystery as ex Ukrainian official is found dead in a swimming pool at Spain complex where Russian defector helicopter pilot was assassinated

Daily Mail​

6 days ago

A former Ukrainian official has been found dead in a swimming pool at a Spanish residential complex where a defected Russian helicopter pilot was assassinated.
Igor Hrushevsky, an ex-employee of Ukraine 's Ministry of Internal Affairs, was swimming in the pool of a residential complex called Cala Alta in Villajoyosa, south of Valencia, before he was found dead.
It is the same building where Maksim Kuzminov was reportedly shot dead after he defected to Ukraine in an Mi-8 helicopter.
The Kremlin was accused of carrying out Kuzminov's assassination last year.
Hrushevsky, 61, was discovered by a Ukrainian neighbour face down in the swimming pool water and bleeding from one ear at around 9:30pm on June 29. He was showing no signs of life.
The passersby pulled him from the water and performed CPR before calling paramedics, but the former official was unable to be saved, according to El Espanol.
The cause of death has not yet been revealed.
Hrushevsky's death comes just 18 months after Russian defector Kuzminov was killed inside a garage allegedly by Putin's hitmen.
He was found riddled with bullets in an underground car park in Villajoyosa near on February 13. Ruben, a local worker, told The Sun he discovered the army captain, 28, in a pool of blood soon after what is believed to have been a brazen Kremlin-ordered hit job.
The pilot, who was named and awarded $500,000 (£393,000) by Ukraine after defecting in August 2024, was found dead in the carpark with his attackers allegedly escaping in his car after running him over.
The killing put fear through other Russian defectors who have fled to Spain, local media reported. Russian state media claimed Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council had advised Kuzminov to stay in Ukraine, where they could protect him.
But after rejecting the advice, he had been given a new identity and joined a large community of Russian speakers living in and around Benidorm using a Ukrainian passport with the name Igor Shevchenko.
The Russian pilot had been sentenced to death for 'treason' in Russia after his shock defection, which is believed to have been the conclusion of a delicate six-month operation orchestrated by Ukraine.
Police sources told The Sun at the time that the ammunition used to kill him was Russian and the move was believed to be a 'calling card', and it was feared he may have been killed by a Kremlin hit squad based in Costa Blanca.
A report also claimed the same hit team may have be responsible for the 2022 death of multimillionaire Sergey Protosenya, 55, who was found hanged after allegedly killing his wife and teenage daughter with an axe as they slept in Costa Rica.
Intelligence experts believed the Russian Embassy in Spain stayed on the sidelines to avoid implication, El Pais reported last year.
Living under a new identity in Spain - and enriched by the Ukrainians after his defection - he had set about building a new life for himself free from the horrors of war.
But he is believed to have made a fatal mistake in contacting a former flame and inviting her to his new address.
'We know he had invited an ex-girlfriend to Spain and afterwards he was found dead. That call could have been intercepted by Russian secret services,' Spanish media reported.
Independent Telegram channel Volya - which monitors both sides in the war - drew a link between the case of the slain pilot and the murky circumstances surrounding the demise of multimillionaire Sergey Protosenya, 55.
The former oligarch, a deputy chairman of Russian gas company Novatek, was found hanged in spring 2022 after allegedly murdering his wife Natalia, 53, and their teenage daughter, Maria, as they slept in a Catalan resort town.