Comment by cowthulhu 3 days ago
> Kamil Hamad disappeared and it is rumored that he received US$1 million, a fake passport and a visa to the US.
Given the chain of events detailed already sounds like it was ripped from a spy novel, I'm pretty skeptical of this claim.
> Then he was found and assassinated in Spain by the FSB.
And that only because he seems to have lost his sense of self-preservation and basically lived his life in the open, in a Spanish town full of Russian ex-pats. And scoffed at the idea that he'd be safer in Ukraine.
Apparently the worst mistake was contacting his former girlfriend in Russia:
>Exactly how the killers found him has not been established, though two senior Ukrainian officials said he had reached out to a former girlfriend, still in Russia, and invited her to come see him in Spain.
>“This was a grave mistake,” one of the officials said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/31/world/europe/russian-defe...
Or there's a mole in Ukrainian intelligence who sold him out
Questionable opsec is almost always the culprit. Even all these online black markets, it wasn’t some sophisticated operation to catch them. Many times, they use the same username on another website and now there’s a link. Hell, one of them used to send email verification for their black market using their personal email.
It doesn’t just stop there. A 49ers wide receiver got shot a couple weeks back because he posted on Instagram about buying a Rolex and he was lucky to survive. That’s also questionable opsec.
This story maybe continues - the killed pilot was allegedly seen alive in Czechia. Though this information is unconfirmed [1].
[1] https://denikn.cz/1510394/cesti-zpravodajci-resili-zda-byl-z...
I guess if your only exposure to spying is through spy novels you probably would feel that way? Nothing about this seems out of line to me.
You should check out any of the books written by Ben Macintyre, especially "The Spy and the Traitor". It turns out a lot of spy novels aren't that far off from reality.
A Russian helicopter pilot had his family escape Russia, stole a helicopter, fled to Ukraine with it and cashed out on the bounty money offered. Then he was found and assassinated in Spain by the FSB. We are living in interesting times.