A spate of suspicious deaths has tormented the Russian elite in recent months. Bill Browder, who once ran Russia’s largest foreign investment fund, believes the mystery deaths were ‘all murders’.
Dmitry Goloshchapov, the son of a Russian oligarch dubbed ‘Putin’s masseur’ was found dead just four days after his father left the country. The whereabouts of his father Konstantin Goloshchapov are unknown.
Anatoly Karpov, 71, a politician and Putin loyalist, has been left in a coma amid reports he was brutally beaten near the Kremlin earlier this month. He had called for an end to the war in Ukraine.
Nikolay Petrunin, 47, dubbed the ‘Gas wonderkid’, died in mid-October allegedly from complications from Covid. His businesses built gas pipelines for major Russian energy operators and he had links to Kremlin gas behemoth Gazprom.
Pavel Pchelnikov, 52, a PR manager for the Russian Railways, was found shot dead at his home in the leafy Kolomenskaya Embankment neighbourhood on September 28.
Yuri Voronov, 61, head of a transport and logistics company for a Gazprom-linked company, was found dead in his swimming pool, with a leading friend who is a top criminologist warning of foul play.
Two more deaths of Gazprom-linked executives were reported in elite homes near St Petersburg amid suspicions that apparent suicides may have been murders.
Alexander Tyulakov, 61, a senior Gazprom financial and security official at deputy general director level, was discovered by his lover the day after war started in Ukraine in February. His neck was in a noose in his £500,000 home.
Leonid Shulman, 60, head of transport at Gazprom Invest, was found dead with multiple stab wounds in a pool of blood on his bathroom floor.
Billionaire Alexander Subbotin, 43, also linked to Kremlin-friendly energy giant Lukoil where he was a top manager, was found dead in May after ‘taking advice from shamans’. One theory is that Subbotin – who also owned a shipping company – was poisoned by toad venom triggering a heart attack.
In April, wealthy Vladislav Avayev, 51, a former Kremlin official, appeared to have taken his own life after killing his wife Yelena, 47, and daughter, 13. He had high-level links to leading Russian financial institution Gazprombank. Friends have disputed reports that he was jealous after his wife admitted she was pregnant by their driver. There are claims he had access to the financial secrets of the Kremlin elite.
Several days later multimillionaire Sergey Protosenya, 55, was found hanged in Spain, after appearing to kill his wife Natalia, 53, and their teenage daughter, Maria, with an axe. He was a former deputy chairman of Novatek, a company also closely linked to the Kremlin.
There have also been questions over the death of Putin’s point man for developing Russia’s vast Arctic resources who ‘fell overboard’ to his death from a boat sailing off the country’s Pacific coast. Ivan Pechorin, 39, had recently attended a major conference hosted by the Kremlin warmonger in Vladivostok. The high-flyer was managing director of Putin’s Far East and Arctic Development Corporation.
And in another case a mobile phone multi-millionaire and his wife were found stabbed to death, with the official version of events raising questions. Naked Yevgeny Palant, 47, and his wife Olga, 50, both Ukrainian-born, were found with multiple knife wounds by their daughter Polina, 20. Immediate briefing to the media claimed the woman took her own life in a jealous rage after Palant said he was leaving her. Yet this was strongly disputed by the couple’s best friend.
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