Assassination or coincidence? Russian officials keep dying

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s high-ranking officials just keep on dying – and the latest statistic died in an odd way.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s cronies are falling like flies. One “suddenly suffocated” while on a road trip on Wednesday. Another “fell overboard” shortly after a visit by his great leader last week. Then there’s the lemming parade of billionaires falling out of windows …

There’s clearly something wrong with Russia’s oligarchs.

Kremlin-controlled media insists the strange spate of deaths is all due to “natural causes”.

Naturally, suspicion is falling on Russia’s KGB-trained President – Vladimir Putin.

It doesn’t matter if you are a crony or a critic. Death appears to come naturally to anyone who dares cross – or fail – him.

And that’s suddenly happening.

A lot.

Just last week, President Putin declared he had “lost nothing” through his invasion of Ukraine.

Days later, Russian troops have once again been routed and are in full retreat – this time from the city of Kharkiv.

Russian President Vladimir Putin. Picture: Sergei Bobylyov / TASS Host Photo Agency / AFP

Bad news is not something Russian audiences have been exposed to. The oligarchs, however, have their own sources.

But now, news of Russia’s defeats has burst through even the state-controlled media’s floodgates.

The Russian Ministry of Defense insists the desperate retreat from the Kharkiv region is a “planned and pre-organised regrouping of troops.” Few buy it.

Pro-Putin parliamentary leader Sergey Mironov openly attacked the campaign’s lack of progress: “It cannot be, and it should not be, that our guys are dying today and we are pretending that nothing is happening!” he tweeted.

High-profile state media personalities are cracking under strain. News analysis anchor Dmitry Kiselyov admitted the past week had been “most difficult” and that the Kremlin’s forces had retreated “under the onslaught of superior enemy forces.”

And everyday political and talk show pundits are openly calling the “special military operation” a war – something that has until now been taboo.

It’s not what Putin wants to hear. So, based on past form, he’ll probably want to send a few new messages. Out the window.

Blood price

Vladimir Nikolayevich Sungorkin, 68, is just the latest statistic.

The editor-in-chief of the Komsomolskaya Pravda news service was driving through Russia’s eastern provinces this Wednesday on what his companions described as a business trip.

“It happened absolutely suddenly. Nothing foreshadowed,” one of his staff, Leonid Zakharov, reported. Sungorkin started gasping for air minutes after suggesting his driver “find a beautiful place somewhere … for lunch.”

Vladimir Nikolayevich Sungorkin died suddenly. Picture: civilmplus.org

The official cause of death is listed as stroke.

Last week, a leading manager of Russia’s Far East and Arctic Development Corporation “fell from a boat” and drowned in the Sea of Japan. The boat was his luxury yacht. His job was modernising Russia’s aviation industry. President Putin had just visited the area as his military joined that of China’s and other allies in major annual war games. His death came just months after the company’s general director, Igor Nosov, died of a “stroke”.

At about the same time, Putin’s propaganda chief – 58-year-old Vladimir Solovyov – appeared on Russian national television with cuts and bruises on his face. When a presenter asked him why, he angrily erupted: “A – it’s none of your dog’s business. B – tell your readers to watch my broadcasts. There’s nothing wrong.”

A window on Putin’s rule

On September 1, a Russian oil company Lukoil chairman “accidentally fell” from a sixth-storey window at Moscow’s elite Central Clinical Hospital.

It wasn’t all that odd. Ravil Maganov is just the latest among Russia’s elites to meet this specific fate.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Oil Company Lukoil Ravil Maganov in 2019. Picture: Mikhail Klimentyev / SPUTNIK / AFP.

Like many others, he’d dared criticise Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Like many others, his official cause of death was “a serious illness”.

Like many others, close associates have also met “unfortunate” deaths.

In this case, Lukoil’s top management official Aleksandr Subbotin was found dead in the basement of a Moscow “purification healer”.

But window accidents abound. And their victims range from humble, but critical, doctors to high-profile executives.

Yegor Prosvirnin fell from a high-rise residential apartment in December last year. The founder of the international Russian news service Sputnik had been a big fan of Putin. But he’d dared warn of rising internal tensions within the Russian Federation.

Yegor Prosvirnin fell to his death.

For some strange reason, a knife and gas canister was found beside his naked body.

In October, a Russian diplomat – tagged by the German government as a potential undercover agent for Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) – died after “falling” from a window of the embassy in Berlin. He was the son of an FSB General.

And a Russian vaccine scientist also died from falling from a window, this time in December 2020, after at least three doctors suffered the exact-same fate for criticising President Putin’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

They’re rich. They’re powerful. They had close ties to the Kremlin. And they died in somewhat suspicious circumstances.

Individually, their deaths don’t seem all that unusual.

Heart attacks happen. People choke. Strokes are a leading cause of death. And people do, on occasion, take their own lives.

But when a particular demographic group starts suffering death in a relatively short period of time, people pay attention.

Were they really poisoned? Were they really pushed?

Is everything really what it seems?

Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer | @JamieSeidel

Originally published as Assassination or coincidence? Russian officials keep dying