Maksim Kuzmínov, a captain in the Russian Air Force, trained at the Sizran Aviation School in southern Russia. He grew up following the example of his grandfather, a renowned fighter pilot in the Soviet era. Kuzmínov was assigned to the Far East, near Vladivostok, where colleagues described him as a calm person who preferred peaceful duties, tasks involving cargo rather than combat missions. He told peers that he feared death or being captured in Ukrainian territory. He even tried to leave the service before the invasion of Ukraine, but he was not allowed to resign.
On August 9, 2023, while captaining a Mi-8 helicopter with the 319th Separate Helicopter Regiment of the Military Aviation of the Russian Federation, Kuzmínov had spent six months in discussions with Ukrainians. He offered to desert after communicating with them through a coded Telegram channel at the end of 2022, which triggered the Ukrainian intelligence service’s mission to rescue him. The helicopter carried three crew members and flew from Kursk to the Kharkiv region to deliver spare parts for fighter aircraft. The craft carried two other crew members on board.
Calls for other desertions
One month after the defection, in September, Kuzmínov, then 28 years old, appeared in the documentary Pilots Killed in Russia. Flanked by two Ukrainian soldiers, he explained that on August 9 he decided to complete his plan to switch sides. He saw that the border lay nearby and that he could fly so low that radar would struggle to track his position. After entering roughly 20 kilometers into Ukrainian territory, he landed. He was hit in the leg, while his two companions, unaware of the events, fled in fear and were shot dead. The families of the two men demanded accountability for the killings.
He received half a million dollars from the Kiev government for switching sides and delivering the Mi-8 along with documentary papers. His action not only exposed Russian operations but also served as a public appeal within the documentary, urging other Russian aviators to follow his lead. He stated, looking into the camera, that they would not regret the decision and that life would change fundamentally once the truth was revealed to them.
“I do not want to enable crimes or genocide”
Kuzmínov also explained his reasons for leaving the Russian military. He argued that what was happening amounted to a genocide of the Ukrainian people and a broader suffering. The principal motive behind his decision, he said, was to avoid facilitating these crimes.
Nearly a month later, on October 1, Russian television officially acknowledged Kuzmínov’s desertion, labeling him a traitor. Publicly masked soldiers explained that they had been tasked with eliminating the traitor.
Initially, the aviator remained in Ukraine under the protection of the Ukrainian intelligence service, along with his mother who had fled to Ukraine prior to the defection. At some point he relocated to Spain, settling in Alicante. On the thirteenth of a recent month, after being located by the foreign intelligence service that oversees external threats, two killers carried out the threat and killed him in a garage in the Vila, firing six shots with Russian ammunition. It was a clear statement of guilt and intent. The sentence was carried out.