Putin's Viktor Belenko Moment Is Surely Coming

Not All The President's Men

Since Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an unusual collection of wealthy businessmen, diplomats, soldiers and security officers have abandoned the system they once served. Granted, none turned up at a NATO airfield in a top-secret fighter jet, but some brought considerable expertise.

Certainly the grandest of them was Anatoly Chubais. An architect of Russia's 1990s economic reforms, former Kremlin chief of staff, boss of state technology company Rosnano and eventually Putin's special representative to international organizations, Chubais had spent decades in the halls of Russian power.

One month after Russian helicopters were sent soaring over the Ukrainian border, he resigned his post and promptly fled the country—though not into the welcoming arms of the West. Instead, he chose Israel as his new home, where he set up the Center for Russian Studies at Tel Aviv University.

Moscow has not exactly forgotten him. Russian courts this year ordered Chubais and other former Rosnano executives to pay billions of rubles over failed projects, while former colleagues have faced criminal prosecutions. Earlier this year, he denounced the cases as "repressions" and "a mockery of the law" in a statement published on his website.

Chubais was followed by Gleb Karakulov, a captain in Russia's secretive Federal Protective Service, or FSO, the intensely secretive organization responsible for protecting Russia's most senior leaders.

Karakulov was responsible for establishing and maintaining secure communications wherever Putin and other top officials traveled. By his own account, he joined more than 180 trips with senior Russian officials before slipping away from his colleagues during a visit to Kazakhstan in October 2022 and flying to Turkey with his family.

When he finally spoke publicly, Karakulov offered a remarkable glimpse behind the curtain. Putin, he said, did not use a mobile phone or the internet, traveled aboard a specially secured train and lived inside an "information vacuum" in which much of what reached him came through people immediately around him.

The conveyor belt of defectors never stopped. Earlier this year, 24-year-old Miroslav Simonov surfaced in Ukraine after serving with the Rubicon: Russia's elite outfit of drone warfare specialists.

Simonov said he had used the "I Want to Live" project, an initiative run by the Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine that helps Russian soldiers to defect, to arrange his escape and eventually cross the front line into Ukrainian-held territory near the town of Pokrovsk. His account offered insight into the personnel, training and practices of a formation at the cutting edge of Russia's increasingly formidable drone operations.

Chubais brought prestige and decades of experience inside the system. Karakulov brought extraordinary access to Putin's inner world. Simonov brought knowledge from a rapidly evolving battlefield capability.

But none brought a cutting-edge bit of kit. Ukraine and its Western partners would very much like to change that.

Bring Your Own Jets

Kyiv has effectively placed a standing advertisement for the next Viktor Belenko into law: Russian military and security personnel who voluntarily hand Ukraine a usable combat aircraft are eligible for a payout of $1 million. A combat helicopter earns $500,000. The law also grants each defector new identity documents, safe residence in Ukraine, and help reaching a safe third country.

In 2023, somebody took up the offer.

On August 9, pilot Maksym Kuzminov flew his Russian Mi-8 military helicopter out of Russia's Kursk region and into Ukrainian-controlled territory. Sitting in the cargo bay of the Mi-8 was an added bonus: a cargo of parts intended for Russian Su-27 and Su-30 fighter aircraft.

The Mi-8, which first took flight in the 1960s, is hardly groundbreaking technology, but Ukraine still received a serviceable Russian military helicopter and a pilot willing to talk. Ukrainian intelligence officials later said examining the aircraft improved its understanding of Russian communications and security systems.

Unlike Belenko, Kuzminov did not live happily ever after.

In February 2024, a handyman living in the picturesque fishing town of Villajoyosa on Spain's Costa Blanca discovered the Russian pilot's mangled body in an underground parking garage. The corpse was riddled with bullet holes, and his killers had also run him over for good measure.

Kuzminov's attackers were never found, but the powers that be in Moscow made no attempt to conceal their joy. "This traitor and criminal became a moral corpse the moment he planned his dirty and terrible crime," Sergey Naryshkin, head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), told Russian media upon news of the pilot's murder.

Former President Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia's security council, added: "A dog gets a dog's death."

The pilot hardly went out of his way to keep a low profile; he spent his $500,000 on a fancy car, drove to Spain and even contacted his former girlfriend back in Russia, encouraging her to come and join him, according to an investigation by El País.

But his violent death serves as a strong incentive against other Russian servicemen thinking about attempting a similarly spectacular defection.

Besides the knowledge that one's life expectancy could rapidly decline upon choosing to defect, Russia's legal system has built a formidable set of incentives for Russian military and political insiders to stay just that. Desertion during mobilization or armed conflict can bring five to 15 years in prison; voluntary surrender carries three to 10; treason, including passing state secrets or switching to the enemy, can mean life.

A former colleague of Gleb Karakulov, FSO major Mikhail Zhilin learned that lesson the hard way. Like Karakulov, he also tried to flee to Kazakhstan, but Astana rejected his asylum claim and deported him straight back to Moscow.

Now, he's sitting in a Siberian penal colony on a six-and-a-half-year sentence.

The Missing Piece

Not every Russian who decides to leave will bring technology or state secrets, but the sheer number leaving creates a problem for the Kremlin.

In the week of Putin's September 2022 partial mobilization announcement, 66,000 Russian citizens entered the EU by land, according to Frontex—a 30 percent rise on the previous week. Many more headed south into Kazakhstan and Georgia.

At least 650,000 Russians have emigrated since then, according to a 2024 analysis of migration data from almost 70 countries by The Bell. They are unusually young and educated: surveys conducted by OutRush, a research project led by the European University Institute, found the average respondent was 33 years old, and 73 percent held at least one higher-education degree. Stanford researchers subsequently described the emigrants as predominantly highly skilled workers in sectors including IT, culture and science.

Putin's Russia has therefore already generated plenty of smaller Belenkos. What it has not yet produced is the complete package.

Belenko gave the West the man, the machine and the secrets, then survived to enjoy the reward. He became an American citizen, built a new career and lived for another 47 years before dying with his sons by his side.

Perhaps the next one will arrive in a Su-57. Perhaps someone will take control of a sophisticated Russian drone and send it soaring into the grateful arms of Ukrainian or Western technicians. Or, perhaps they will simply walk across a border carrying knowledge more valuable than anything with wings.