Former Ukrainian Interior Ministry officer found dead in pool at Spanish complex where Russian defector pilot was previously killed
The body of 61-year-old Ihor Hrushevskyi, a former officer with the Ukrainian Interior Ministry’s Department for Combating Organized Crime, was found at the Cala Alta residential complex in the Spanish town of Villajoyosa, El Español reported, citing sources.
Hrushevskyi was discovered in the complex’s swimming pool on the evening of June 29. He had purchased an apartment there a few months earlier. Neighbors found him unconscious in the water. He was pulled from the pool, but neither bystanders nor emergency responders were able to revive him.
There were no signs of violence on his body, though blood was reportedly visible coming from one ear.
According to El Español, neighbors were unaware of Hrushevskyi’s background. Journalists later learned of it through Ukrainian public records, which indicate that in 1993, he served as head and authorized representative for the registration of legal entities in the Interior Ministry’s organized crime department for the Cherkasy and Kirovohrad regions. The department was disbanded in 2015 as part of Ukraine’s police reform.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said, citing the country’s consulate general in Barcelona, that Hrushevskyi died by drowning.
El Español noted that a large number of Russians and Ukrainians live in the Villajoyosa area.
In February 2024, former Russian military pilot Maxim Kuzminov was shot and killed in the same Cala Alta complex. In August 2023, he had defected from Russia to Ukraine, flying a Mi-8 military helicopter across the border.
Ukrainian officials had advised him not to leave the country, but he later relocated to Spain, where he bought an apartment in Villajoyosa. Members of Russia’s GRU special forces had publicly threatened to kill him — appearing on Russian television, they vowed to punish him “to the fullest extent of the law” and warned that he would “not live to see trial.”
