Is Russia pursuing Putin foes abroad, going after critics and defectors on Western soil?
The expression 'mysterious Russian death syndrome' is a grim turn of phrase used to describe the falls from top floor windows, poisonings and unsolved shootings of President Vladimir Putin's enemies. Since the invasion of Ukraine two years ago, he has used these methods to go after more of his critics on Western soil. Last month, the head of Britain's domestic spy agency – MI5 – said Russia is on a "sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets" as part of what U.S. intelligence officials call Putin's war on the west. Tonight, evidence of this - in one of the most brazen assassinations ever committed outside of Russia.
Villajoyosa is a seaside resort town on Spain's Mediterranean coast. Many of the residents who live there year-round -- are from Russia and Ukraine.
But this past February the town whose name translates to joyful village was the scene of a horrific murder that made international headlines. Inside a parking garage the victim's body was discovered riddled with bullet holes. It looked like a mafia-style contract killing.
One of the witnesses at the scene was the building's handyman, Ruben Ferrándiz.
Ruben Ferrándiz (translation): I was inside a section of the garage cleaning and I heard a car speeding up the ramp really fast.
Ferrándiz told us he checked the exit ramp of the garage and that's when he saw a body lying face up on the pavement.
Ruben Ferrándiz (translation): We didn't touch him but we saw he was already dead.
Cecilia Vega: Que ya estaba muerto?
Ruben Ferrándiz: Ya estaba muerto.
Ferrándiz said he called for help.
Cecilia Vega: How many times had he been shot?
Ruben Ferrándiz (translation): They opened up his t-shirt and he had a bullet, one bullet, right in his heart.
Cecilia Vega: Nomas una?
Ruben Ferrándiz (translation): One in his heart, one in his ribs, and in his belly he had some. The lady from the ambulance said he'd been shot five times.
Police later identified the victim as a 28-year-old Russian named Maxim Kuzminov. In 2023, Kuzminov bought an apartment inside this high-rise complex.
His murder was not the first time Kuzminov had made international headlines.
He was a military helicopter pilot in Russia who defected after being recruited online by Ukranian intelligence officers. They helped him plan his escape.
This is the helicopter Kuzminov flew on Aug. 9, 2023… below radar so he wasn't detected as he crossed the front lines from Russia into Ukraine. Kuzminov handed over the helicopter, seen in this footage from the Ukrainian military. He also gave them sensitive military equipment and top secret Russian intelligence. In return, Ukraine gave Kuzminov half a million dollars and a new Ukrainian identity. It was a big victory for Ukraine, which had Kuzminov tell his story on national TV.
Maxim Kuzminov (translation from 2023 interview on Ukranian television): What is happening now is simply a genocide of Ukrainian people, both Ukrainian and Russian people. I did it because I didn't want to be a part of these crimes. I know exactly how this will end. Ukraine will definitely win this war because its people are very united.
Kuzminov's Ukrainian handlers warned him not to leave the country because of fears Putin would send a Russian military kill team after him.
But he didn't listen…
In Spain this summer, we went to the garage where Kuzminov was killed and saw for ourselves the bullet holes, the crime scene, and the placement of security cameras.
We were told those security cameras recorded the murder and that the footage showed two assassins entering the garage and hiding in the backseat of their car behind tinted glass. They waited for five hours for Kuzminov to show up to his parking spot. Then they sprayed him with bullets.
Cecilia Vega: Did you not hear gunshots?
Ruben Ferrándiz: No.
Cecilia Vega: Nothing, it was completely silent?
Ruben Ferrándiz (translation): Nothing. I just heard the car leave in a big hurry, and that's when I came out, but I didn't hear any gunshots.
Cecilia Vega: What does that tell you about the weapons that they used?
Ruben Ferrándiz (translation): That they used a silencer, because otherwise, I would have heard the gunshots.
The assassins fled the scene and burned the getaway car with an industrial grade accelerant. This would have destroyed any GPS tracking in the car, hiding their trail. The remnants were discovered on the other side of a tunnel in a place so isolated the killers likely would have needed help from locals to know the location.
Michael Weiss: This is not amateur hour. These guys know what they're doing. And they've probably killed people before.
Michael Weiss has been researching Russian intelligence services for decades. He's the U.S. editor at The Insider, an investigative magazine created by Russian journalists in exile.
Cecilia Vega: How was Maxim Kuzminov killed?
Michael Weiss: So his murder bears all the hallmarks of a professional hit. We know that he was being surveilled for weeks, if not months, beforehand because the killers knew his-- his movements. The weapon that they used, we don't know exactly if it was a pistol or what, but the ammunition was Russian. So a signature, leaving something behind that at least telegraphs where it's coming from.
Cecilia Vega: That sounds like a huge piece of evidence.
Michael Weiss: It's leading back to Moscow, which what-- they want you to know that. You know, they want-- they wanna be able to say, "You can't prove it was us, but come on, let's be honest. You know it was us."
Kuzminov did not live a quiet life in Spain. A neighbor told us that he often drank at this local bar and was heard bragging about who he really was.
Local authorities here in Villajoyosa are no longer in charge of the investigation into Kuzminov's death. That's now in the hands of the Spanish Civil Guard, the equivalent of the FBI. But there is a gag order in this case and authorities have said very little about it publicly, except to issue a stern warning: if it is proven that Russia is behind the death of Maxim Kuzminov, Spain will issue a forceful response.
But so far they've done nothing. We requested interviews with half a dozen local and federal spanish officials about the Kuzminov case. no one would talk.
His death was celebrated on Russian state television … and by the former prime minister … When Russian reporters asked him about Kuzminov, he was blunt.
Former Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev (translation from Russian state television): "For a dog, a dog's death."
A source close to the investigation gave 60 Minutes these photos of men who they say were identified by Spanish authorities as persons of interest who were in Spain at the time of Kuzminov's murder. 60 Minutes has learned the man on the left is a former KGB officer and the man in the middle, his relative, is a Russian police colonel. It's yet another indicator that the Russian government may be involved.Cecilia Vega: Who do you think killed Maxim Kuzminov?
Michael Weiss: I absolutely think it was the Russian Special Services. I don't think there's any doubt in-- in anyone's mind-- least of all Ukrainians or Russians, that he was-- liquidated by Moscow.
And it appears the Ukrainians are pushing back. In a bizarre twist straight out of a spy thriller, Kuzminov seemed to rise from the dead five months after he was killed. These pictures appeared this summer on social media showing a man who looked like Kuzminov at an air show.
60 Minutes has learned it was likely a Ukrainian intelligence officer wearing an elaborate disguise, including a mask made to look nearly identical to the Russian defector. The Ukrainians were conducting their own misinformation campaign —trying to beat the Russians at their own game. Their goal — to make the world think Kuzminov had survived the assassination attempt and was still working for ukraine… a show to other potential Russians that they would be safe if they too defected.
We confirmed that the real Kuzminov — was buried in an unmarked grave in southern Spain.
Cecilia Vega: Why would the Spanish government not be screaming from the rooftops about a murder on their soil?
Michael Weiss: Because it's gonna lead to panic. If you're a tourist, do you want to vacation in Alicante knowing that you might be collateral damage in some-- Russian assassin's hit?
Cecilia Vega: Is this Western governments looking the other way, in some cases?
Michael Weiss: Very much so.
Cecilia Vega: Because the price of looking directly into the eyes of the Kremlin is what? What's the risk?
Michael Weiss: Well, there's also a fear of-- of escalation.
That's because there have been more than 60 mysterious deaths of Putin's enemies in Russia and Europe since the Ukraine war began. Like gas executive Sergey Protosenya and his family, who died in a reported murder/suicide in this villa in coastal Spain two months after the Ukraine invasion.
And Dmitry Zelinov, who ran one of Russia's largest real estate companies, died from head injuries after falling down stairs in the French Riviera.
Dozens more like this man have fallen out of windows or died in crashes in Russia. It has European officials increasingly on edge about how much Putin gets away with.
Jovita Neliupšienė: If we don't stop him at his borders, he will-- will march on.
Jovita Neliupšienė is the ambassador to the United States from the European Union and Lithuanian by birth.
Cecilia Vega: In recent years, we've seen Russia linked to a number of attacks on infrastructure around Europe. They have been accused of targeting arms shipments, railways. What do you think is behind that?
Jovita Neliupšienė: This is a challenging the-- the order, the stability of Europe and actually testing.
Cecilia Vega: Testing because they wanna push to see how much they can get away with?
Jovita Neliupšienė: Of course. All those sabotage, cyber, or attacks on critical infrastructure is actually happening on EU and NATO territory. They are testing how much they can-- can move. President Biden, when he was making State of the Union this year, he said like, "If we don't stop Putin, he will continue." Because he's not a man of the good-- goodwill. He understands only the language of strength.
In addition to the assassinations, Russia has been implicated in sabotage attacks, including a firebombing at a German factory owned by a leading weapons company, an attack on one of the largest shopping malls in Poland, and the cutting of an underwater gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea.
Cecilia Vega: Is Putin at war with the West?
Jovita Neliupšienė: Well, of course, yes. We have to take him actually not only seriously, but literally.
As a result of Putin's summer of mayhem, last month the EU announced a new type of sanctions aimed at the organizations and people that carry out violence for Russia. If it's proven that any Spanish or EU citizens helped the killers of Maxim Kuzminov escape, then the sanctions could be aimed at them.
Cecilia Vega: The question is whether sanctions and diplomacy are working.
Jovita Neliupšienė: You just have to imagine and think what could happen if we don't have neither sanctions, neither diplomacy, neither economic measures. The war would be in a different scale and a different attitude if we don't have the sanctions.
Cecilia Vega: But as we sit here today, is it fair to say that Russia is winning?
Jovita Neliupšienė: Well, definitely not.We are on the winning side. Have you heard anyone wanting to move-- to-- to-- to live in Russia recently? I think-- I think not.
Cecilia Vega: Is what Russia is doing in Europe a warning for the United States?
Jovita Neliupšienė: It's the warning for everyone of-- of us that it's-- they are not really only in Ukraine-- with the-- with the war there. They are here. It's actually happening everywhere. So that's why we have to be vigilant, every one of us.
If the brazen assassination of Russian defector Maxim Kuzminov is a warning to Europe about Vladimir Putin's long violent reach —what could it mean for the United States? Is the country prepared for Putin going after his critics on U.S. soil? It turns out he's already come close. Tonight, Matt Olsen, the head of the National Security Division at the Justice Department, says he's concerned that what happened to Kuzminov in Spain could happen here.
Cecilia Vega: Mysterious Russian Death Syndrome. Accurate way to describe what's happened to some of Putin critics?
Matt Olsen: Yeah - we're not really seeing things that are particularly mysterious…
Cecilia Vega: They're all pretty black and white to you?
Matt Olsen: I don't think Putin is trying to hide his hand. I think quite the opposite. I think these are-- they're going after their critics-- both to eliminate the critics but also to send a stark and chilling message.
Cecilia Vega: He's not hiding his M.O.
Matt Olsen: He's not hiding his M.O. He is going after them because he wants, not just those individuals, but anyone who would think about doing the same thing to think twice and to be worried about, "What will happen to me if I go down that same path?"
Matt Olsen's team at the Department of Justice has prosecuted nearly 60 cases in U.S. courts related to Russian disinformation, sanctions violations and espionage since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Matt Olsen: I think we should be very, very concerned about how aggressive Putin is being, in going after the United States as well as our allies.
Cecilia Vega: As we sit here today, can you say whether there are Russian assets currently working in the United States right now?
Matt Olsen: There certainly are-- Russian-- intelligence assets in the United States-- working on-- on a range of-- threats to the United States.
Cecilia Vega: How much of a danger do they pose?
Matt Olsen: They are engaged in repressing people who are critics of the Putin regime. And in between they're conducting foreign malign influence. They're-- attempting to interfere in our elections and our politics. They are carrying out cyber-- attacks and putting our critical infrastructure at risk.
Cecilia Vega: Has it gotten worse since the war in Ukraine?
Matt Olsen: I think essentially that the Russian intelligence services over the past couple years have been on a war footing. We are working really closely with our counterparts in-- in Europe, both on the law enforcement and the intelligence side, to make sure that we're sharing information, sharing intelligence, and sharing really best practices.
Earlier this year U.S. intelligence officials provided information that allowed Germany to stop a Russian assassination attempt before it happened -- saving the life of a CEO of a German company that provides weapons to Ukraine. But there have been many other plots that weren't stopped.
Cecilia Vega: The case of Maxim Kuzminov in Spain, could something like that happen here?
Matt Olsen: It was a particularly brazen act by the assassins to kill him in his garage of his apartment. You can never rule out, I think, that something like that could happen in any country, given how aggressive Russia's intelligence services have been. I will say that it is a focus of-- of us in the Justice Department and the FBI to do everything we can to prevent that kind of activity.
But the same thing almost did happen here, in Miami, in 2020. Russian defector Aleksander Poteyev was followed and his car photographed in his apartment garage in the Miami Trump Towers by someone hired by Russian intelligence. It was straight out of the same playbook as the Kuzminov killing but here on U.S. soil.
Cecilia Vega: What is concerning to you about what happened in that case?
Alan Kohler: The concern is that Russia actually tasked someone to locate and find this individual. The obvious next steps would be potentially to carry out some sort of operation, but luckily that was stopped before it happened.
Alan Kohler retired in 2023 from the FBI as assistant director for counterintelligence. His team was responsible for the Poteyev investigation that led to this man, a Mexican citizen named Hector Fuentes. Fuentes had studied in Russia and had a Russian family.
Alan Kohler: Russia prevented his Russian wife from leaving the country, and in exchange for cooperation on that, Fuentes agreed to carry out some activities on behalf of the Russian intelligence services. The main one of those was to rent an apartment in a particular apartment complex in Florida and then later to actually go there and do surveillance to locate the source's car.
In Miami, a security guard saw Fuentes tailgating another car to slip into the parking garage. Fuentes was later arrested and admitted he was working for Russian intelligence. He pleaded guilty to acting as a foreign agent.
Cecilia Vega: So in that situation, it all worked out.
Alan Kohler: Right.
Cecilia Vega: There was no harm done. There was an arrest. Does that case tell you that Russia is this close from being able to pull that off?
Alan Kohler: Oh, it certainly tells us Russia could pull it off if they-- if they really put the effort into it. That-- that is our concern, 100%-- for that source and lots of other people inside the United States.
So who was Aleksander Poteyev, the man Fuentes was tracking? There's only one known picture of him, from his early days in the Russian army. But Poteyev was a double agent working for the U.S.
In 2010, a group of Russian spies was rounded up in the U.S. Alan Kohler led the FBI team that surveilled them for years as they lived seemingly normal lives— all while secretly passing intelligence back to moscow. The case was the basis of the hit tv-show "The Americans."
In real life Alexander Poteyev was their boss and ran the group of illegal agents from Moscow, until he gave their identities away to U.S. intelligence and defected to Miami. For that, Putin wanted him dead.
Sources told 60 Minutes Poteyev is still alive and is in hiding … but Kohler warns that Putin is fully capable of killing an enemy on U.S. soil…
Cecilia Vega: Is it just a matter of time that that happens?
Alan Kohler: The decision to do something like that is a calculus that has to be done inside-- inside of Russia. And they have to determine, is this-- is the effort and the blowback they're gonna get in the-- in the international stage worth the incremental benefit that they get from killing a certain individual.
Kohler says the FBI has the resources to fight back against Russia in the United States, but it can be very difficult to stop a determined assassin.
Alan Kohler: So I don't want to make it seem like Russia is ten feet tall and bulletproof, cause they're not but it's also not hard to kill somebody. You know, take the United States, for example. There's thousands and thousands of people that land from overseas every single day. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security, we can't track every one of those. You know, it's possible that they could actually carry out those attacks without law enforcement, FBI, anybody else knowing about it.
Cecilia Vega: If the Kremlin did want an opponent killed here in the United States, would-- wouldn't they make it look like a suicide?
Alan Kohler: They could, sure. And-- we would, we may never know. That's-- that's what makes it so hard. That's what makes this work so hard, the business of counterintelligence and trying to counter what other countries are trying to do, is they deliberately try to obfuscate and hide their efforts. So if they wanted somebody killed and they were-- and they came in and did it without an-- an intelligence tie, and he's maybe-- a conduit or a third party, it'd be very difficult to-- figure that out.
The Washington, D.C. death of a vocal Putin critic named Dan Rapoport could be one of those cases where Russia is trying to cover its tracks. Rapoport was a financier from Latvia with ties to Russia and Ukraine. He died after falling from his apartment building in 2022, about a mile from the White House.
Rapoport's Russian business partner had died years earlier in a fall from his Moscow apartment that was caught on camera. Rapoport's manner of death is still considered 'undetermined' by D.C. police and the case is still open.
Retired FBI agent Alan Kohler told us D.C. authorities never briefed him on the case when he was the head of counterintelligence.
Alan Kohler: My takeaway from-- from Russia right now is-- is the U.S. took its eye off of Russia after 9/11 when we all pivoted, and really the world pivoted towards counterterrorism. But to dismiss them as an intelligence threat-- would be unwise for all of us to do.
Cecilia Vega: They're still at it in a very dangerous way, as you see it--
Alan Kohler: They're still at it in a very dangerous way. The same people are still in charge. They have the same capabilities and the intent to do all the things they've done in the past.
Cecilia Vega: It looks like Putin has been allowed to get away with this. Has he?
Alan Kohler: In many ways, yes. So he's been able to poison and kill his way around the world for-- for over a decade now with just some sanctions put on his government. But he's still in charge, and his behavior hasn't changed. Did he get away with it? I mean, I think an objective observer has to say, "Yes."
Produced by Oriana Zill de Granados and Michael Rey. Associate producers: Emily Gordon, Jaime Woods, Aarthi Rajaraman. Broadcast associate, Katie Jahns. Edited by April Wilson.
