Ex-Ukrainian official found dead at the same Spanish resort where Russian defector was killed: reports

A Ukrainian former anti-organized-crime official was found dead in a pool at the same Spanish resort where a Russian military defector was gunned down a year earlier, reports said.

Ihor Hrushevskyi — a 61-year-old ex-senior official with Kyiv’s Interior Ministry’s Department for Combating Organized Crime — was discovered floating face-down June 29 in the communal pool at the Cala Alta luxury apartment complex in Villajoyosa, El Español reported.

Hrushevskyi’s death comes a year after police found the bullet-riddled body of former Russian military helicopter pilot and alleged Kremlin “traitor” Maksim Kuzminov, 28, in the underground parking garage of the same resort.

While local authorities say there were no signs of a violent attack against Hrushevskyi, foul play has not been ruled out, with officials saying Hrushevskyi’s death at least appears suspicious at this point.

Hrushevskyi, who served Ukraine’s anti-organized crime agency in the 1990s, had been one of the resort’s newest guests when he went out to the pool last month at around 9:30 p.m., according to police.

Shortly after, a fellow Ukrainian staying at the resort found him floating dead in the pool, with some surmising he suffered a medical episode while in the water and drowned, the local outlet reported.

As the investigation began into this death, officials and local journalists ran into difficulties identifying Hrushevskyi, given the fact that there was “no trace in official documents or public information” about him because of the nature of his job, authorities said.

Officials have yet to reveal a cause of death.

Ukrainian officials have not commented on Hrushevskyi’s death, but the foreign ministry reportedly said its consulate in Spain was handling repatriating the body.

As for Kuzminov, he was marked by the Kremlin as a “traitor” and found gunned down Feb. 13, 2024. He had been shot at least six times and run over by his attackers’ car, according to Spain’s state news agency EFE.

The Moscow defector had been living in Spain with a Ukrainian passport and under an assumed name after fleeing Russia in his helicopter and handing top intelligence documents to Kyiv.

Before his murder, Kuzminov slammed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion as “a genocide of Ukrainian people,” with the defector warned to remain in Ukraine or risk retaliation from the Kremlin.

But the 28-year-old decided to move to the sunny Villajoyosa — Spanish for “joyous village.”

Months before his death, Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service, claimed that Russia’s top intel agency had “given the order” to kill Kuzminov.