Suicides, coronary heart attacks… With Prigozin, the listing of suspicious deaths of Russian elites grows

A aggregate of instances or a cleverly orchestrated homicide? After the dying of Wagner boss Evgueni Prigozin, the question merits to be requested. Even Paris evoked “affordable doubts” on “the situations” of the air crash, when Berlin dismissed the music of “risk” by evoking in half a word a potential involvement of the Kremlin. If the thriller stays complete, it adds to the long list of unexplained deaths in the Russian elite since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.

In 2022 alone, our colleagues from the Sidney Morning Herald counted 23. We can cite in particular the suicides of billionaires inside the field of strength, Alexander Tyulakov, determined inert in his garage, Mikhail Watford, hanged in his house inside the United Kingdom, or Andrei Krukovsky, who fell off a cliff in his ski lodge.

“Sensitive data about Putin’s regime”

That of Ravil Maganov, in September 2022, is even extra striking. The chairman of the board of administrators of the Russian personal oil group Loukoil is formally lifeless “after a critical infection” in keeping with the agency, whilst a few declare to have visible him fall from a window of his clinic room. He have been one of the few huge bosses to talk out publicly for a “brief give up to the warfare” in Ukraine.

“Even if they are executives and not oligarchs strictly speakme, these people ought to have touchy statistics at the functioning of the Putin regime, defined to us in April 2022 Tatiana Kastouéva-Jean, researcher on the French Institute. International Relations (Ifri). It can not be ruled out that a person tried to save you them from fleeing. »

VIDEO. “I heard a bang, then the wing came off,” says a witness to the crash in Russia

This “epidemic” of sudden deaths did now not forestall there. The yr 2023 has started for the instant on the equal bases. In February, it turned into Vladimir Makarov, a former Russian wellknown, who was determined lifeless in his home from a shotgun bullet. At 72, he had simply been fired by means of Vladimir Putin from his submit as deputy head of the anti-extremist unit in which he needed to suppress anti-warfare demonstrations mainly. In the identical month, Marina Yankina, head of the finance department within the Russian Ministry of Defense, turned into found on the foot of a building in Saint Petersburg, after a fall of about fifty meters.

“No secret provider signature”

Higher up, Pyotr Kucherenko, Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education, officially died after a “heart attack” on a plane among Cuba and Moscow last May. The secretary of state changed into recognized to have criticized the invasion in Ukraine at some point of a non-public communique with a Russian journalist in 2022.

The Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation and the husband of a member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation Diana Gurtskaya Pyotr #Kucherenko died

The ministry defined that Kucherenko became sick at the plane on which the #Russian… p.C.Twitter.Com/K5XeZO7e3I

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) May 21, 2023

 

This summer time, we can also surprise about the demise of Anton Cherepennikov, 40, of a coronary heart assault. His business enterprise ICS Holding turned into accused of getting participated with the FSB within the mass surveillance of the Russian populace earlier than the start of the conflict in Ukraine. Recently, in mid-August, Gennady Lopyrev, Putin’s former bodyguard and supervisor of the construction of his “palace” in Gelendzhik. Sentenced to imprisonment via an anti-corruption court docket, he formally died of leukemia recognized two days earlier.

A brief and brief dying like all of the others. From there to see a way of the Russian intelligence services? Alain Rodier, deputy director of the French Intelligence Research Center (CF2R), has already spoke back in our columns. “It is a big fantasy to suppose that the Russian intelligence services will decide upon one method to any other. (…) Even if it is traumatic, it isn't about a signature, nor from the name of the game services, nor from the center of the crime”, he had deciphered even as speakme of the suicide within the United Kingdom of Mikhail Watford. The mysteries will consequently stay intact!