A Russian helicopter pilot who defected to Ukraine last year in a secret operation has been found dead in Spain, according to the main military intelligence agency in Kyiv.
Reports in Russian and Spanish media on Monday said Maksim Kuzminov was found dead after allegedly moving to the town of Villajoyosa in Alicante on the Mediterranean coast, in an area popular with holidaymakers. His body was discovered last Tuesday, it was said, on the car park ramp underneath an apartment block.
The reports claimed he had been murdered by unknown gunmen who fired 12 shots. A burnt-out car was discovered nearby in the Costa Blanca town of El Campello. Spanish police had initially thought the shooting was gang-related before reportedly learning of the victim’s extraordinary backstory and his former role in Russia’s war and invasion.
No. A mafia makes you pay “protection” from the things they’ll do to you if you don’t pay. A government makes pay taxes for a very real threat of what other nations and people within your nation will do without that security they provide. They also build roads and bridges and fire departments, water towers and plumbing, and other things necessary for a civilized world.
In turn of the century Sicily at least the mafia did all of that. They were the de facto government and provided services. It was much less like it was in the new world where organized crime developed under a functioning democratic government and operated in secret and much more like an informal feudal state persisting past the unification of Italy that really did have (and require) popular support.
During the the wild 90’s, shortly after the revolution, in a small eastern european country, most gangs actually provided the protection. Not only from themselves, but from anybody who’d dare to make trouble in your establishment.
But the competition was getting tough. One can only bomb so many cars and disappear so many people until the public starts to demand a change.
Not all the gangs were led by incompetent idiots though. Some had a vision. They got themselves allies in the highest places, to ensure the monopoly they craved. Instead of “protecting” small pubs, they started to think bigger, and became public contractors, working for the government.
It all started more than 20 years ago, but the same people, same companies are still there, still making profit to this day. Not building roads, but protecting the state owned buildings and government employees.
The core business is the same, they just became… civilized.