[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Locke

Its pay-walled, can you give us some highlights?

The pastel-hued village where Russian pilot Maksim Kuzminov settled on the coast of Spain must have seemed a world away from the war he thought he had escaped last year when he defected to Ukraine. But the discovery of his bullet-riddled body last week appeared to deliver a menacing new signal from Moscow that those who cross the Kremlin — no matter how far they flee from the war’s front lines — should never consider themselves safe.

Kuzminov was killed in a barrage of gunfire and then run over with his own vehicle by assailants who then used the car to escape, according to Spanish authorities, Ukraine security officials and Spanish media reports.


The attack lacked the elaborate touches often associated with Russian assassination plots. He was not poisoned with a weapons-grade toxin or found in the wreckage of an aircraft that plunged from the sky. Yet the message behind Kuzminov’s death is the same as it has been through much of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s two-decade tenure, according to Western security officials and experts.


“It is a reminder for everyone who is in exile and actively in opposition to the regime — they are all on somebody’s list,” said Eugene Rumer, a former senior U.S. intelligence official who directs the Russia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

First few paragraphs.