Spanish police suspect bullet-riddled body may be Russian who defected with army helicopter

[psyche101]

Spanish police suspect bullet-riddled body may be Russian who defected with army helicopter

 

Police believe a bullet-riddled body found in a parking garage in Spain could belong to a Russian defector who escaped across the frontline into Ukraine last year with an army helicopter. 

The man had been shot half a dozen times and was run over by a car in La Cala, near the eastern port city of Alicante. 

 

More "terrible luck" for Russian defectors. 

He must have tripped and fell on an automatic machine gun on his way the the ground after falling out of a window. 

[DarkHunter]

While it is unfortunate the guy was killed he was rather stupid in what he did after he defected.

For anyone that doesn't know the guy who died was the guy who flew a Russian Mi-8 helicopter to a Ukrainian airfield and surrendered the helicopter and its cargo of jet components to the Ukranian military.  Unfortunately the other Russians involved in this flight did not know about his planned defection and were killed by the Ukranian military when they tried to resist.  There has been some speculation, but nothing confirmed, that he may have killed his copilot during his defection.  If I remember correctly 4 or 5 Russian military personnel were ultimately killed by his defection.  After his defection instead of just taking the money and being quite he became very vocal on his support for Ukraine and criticized the Russian government and military frequently and heavily, he also was very open in how he was going to go live in Spain, which the article oddly enough didnt mention or talk about.  Lastly from what I have heard he was found dead after agreeing to meet an ex-girlfriend who was living in Russia in the parking garage in Spain but I am not sure if this specific part is true but it is what I heard.

Ultimately a guy whose defection caused multiple casualties, started publicly criticizing the Russian military and government, made his name and location well known, and agreed to meet a current Russian citizen being found killed is not particularly surprising or unexpected.

I also heard that the body might not actually be his and this is all some planned intelligence operation to protect him from potential assassinations by faking his death but that is more conspiracy theory and it does seem like he was actually killed.

To be clear I don't have a problem with his defection having resulted in multiple Russian casualties but it did make him a bigger target.

Edited February 22 by DarkHunter

[psyche101]

@DarkHunter

Do you have a good link to his initial defection? It sounds worth a read. 

[Duke Wellington]

1 hour ago, psyche101 said:

Spanish police suspect bullet-riddled body may be Russian who defected with army helicopter

Police believe a bullet-riddled body found in a parking garage in Spain could belong to a Russian defector who escaped across the frontline into Ukraine last year with an army helicopter. 

The man had been shot half a dozen times and was run over by a car in La Cala, near the eastern port city of Alicante. 

More "terrible luck" for Russian defectors. 

He must have tripped and fell on an automatic machine gun on his way the the ground after falling out of a window. 

Have a look at some YouTube videos on it and then the comments underneath it.

There are Russian comments, copy paste them into Google Translate for some entertainment. Its like they are all having a party at him being snubbed out. There is literally not one against it. Some of those I have just seen translate as:

Hi Navalny, bye Navalny!

Burn in hell you traitor pig.

You can run but you cannot hide!

Edited February 22 by Electric Scooter

[psyche101]

8 minutes ago, Electric Scooter said:

Have a look at some YouTube videos on it and then the comments underneath it.

There are Russian comments, copy paste them into Google Translate for some entertainment. Its like they are all having a party at him being snubbed out. There is literally not one against it. Some of those I have just seen translate as:

Hi Navalny, bye Navalny!

Burn in hell you traitor pig.

You can run but you cannot hide!

 

 

Whats Navalny got to do with this? 

 

 

[DarkHunter]

29 minutes ago, psyche101 said:

@DarkHunter

Do you have a good link to his initial defection? It sounds worth a read. 

Not really, a lot of it is buried deep in Twitter.  A few articles talk about it but not a lot of detail is given.  

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/09/04/europe/russian-helicopter-pilot-defects-ukraine-intl/index.html

That has a little bit but nothing great.  They say the crew was three but I could of swore there was more people involved.  The crew size is weird cause Mi-8 helicopters don't really have a crew size of 3, they have a pilot and copilot with the ability to carry either 24 people or 4,000 kg either internally or externally or some mix of cargo and personal so a three person crew would be weird.  The fact he was able to change course and fly to a Ukranian airfield lead to the speculation that he killed the copilot as it seems unlikely the copilot wouldn't try resisting.  

[psyche101]

1 hour ago, DarkHunter said:

Not really, a lot of it is buried deep in Twitter.  A few articles talk about it but not a lot of detail is given.  

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/09/04/europe/russian-helicopter-pilot-defects-ukraine-intl/index.html

That has a little bit but nothing great.  They say the crew was three but I could of swore there was more people involved.  The crew size is weird cause Mi-8 helicopters don't really have a crew size of 3, they have a pilot and copilot with the ability to carry either 24 people or 4,000 kg either internally or externally or some mix of cargo and personal so a three person crew would be weird.  The fact he was able to change course and fly to a Ukranian airfield lead to the speculation that he killed the copilot as it seems unlikely the copilot wouldn't try resisting.  

I know we usually clash, so it's really nice to be on the same page, thank you for the information and link, it does put the story in a somewhat different light. I appreciate your input. Very interesting.

It certainly sounds like a great deal of the story is missing. The pilot pleaded with the others, yet they met a grisly end? That just strikes me as strange. Possible but strange. That the pilot would survive if outnumbered in the helicopter and strange that the soldiers would die if in captivity when asked.

I'll look around on X. Thanks again. It's become quite the mystery all of a sudden.

Edited February 22 by psyche101

[psyche101]

2 hours ago, DarkHunter said:

To be clear I don't have a problem with his defection having resulted in multiple Russian casualties but it did make him a bigger target.

Agreed.