Two Russian colonels are reported to have fallen out of windows in the space of two days, adding to a growing list of high-ranking officials who have died in mysterious circumstances since Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine began.
Since Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, there have been a series of mysterious deaths involving prominent Russian figures, including tycoons, businessmen and oil executives. Many of them died after falling out of windows.
Artur Pryakhin, 56, the head of a regional branch of Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) in the Republic of Karelia, died after falling from a fifth floor window of an office building at around noon on February 4.
Local authorities said he left a suicide note in his office in which he apologized to his wife, asked his loved ones for forgiveness, and urged them not to blame anyone for his death.
Russia’s Investigative Committee confirmed his identity and ruled his death a suicide. Law enforcement officials are investigating the circumstances of his demise.
Pryakhin was a police colonel earlier in his career and was appointed regional FAS head in February 2014, Russian newspaper Izvestia reported. He also served as the head of the Economic Crimes Department of the Ministry for Internal Affairs of the Republic of Karelia from 2010 to 2011.
He is survived by his wife and son.
On the same day, in Moscow, the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee Forensic Center plunged from a fourth floor window at his office building. Colonel Alexey Zubkov survived and was found conscious after avoiding serious injury, reported local news outlet MK.ru.
He claimed he went to the bathroom—the room from which he fell—but had no recollection of falling from the window. Zubkov was hospitalized, and an investigation into the incident is ongoing.
“Colleagues suggested that Alexey Zubkov might have been stressed the day before a final board meeting; his superiors (First Deputy Director of the SEC Alexander Sobolev and General of the Main Directorate of the Fire Department Anatoly Sazonov) were at the scene of the incident,” said VChK-OGPU, a news outlet that purports to have inside information from Russian security forces.
And on Thursday, 58-year-old Russian musician and radio host Vadim Stroykin died after he fell out of a window in St. Petersburg as his apartment was being searched by authorities, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported. The search was reportedly conducted as part of a criminal case.
There have been a spate of incidents in recent years involving prominent officials falling from windows.
Ravil Maganov, the chairman of Russian oil giant Lukoil, the country’s second-largest oil producer, was found dead on September 1, 2022, after falling from a hospital window in Moscow. The circumstances surrounding the 67-year-old’s death remain unexplained. He had worked at Lukoil since 1993.
A few months later, on December 25, 2022, Pavel Antov, a Russian politician who had criticized Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, was found dead after a fall from a window in India.
Antov, who was a member of Putin’s United Russia party and a wealthy sausage tycoon, was found lying in a pool of blood outside the Hotel Sai International in the district of Rayagada, which is in the state of Odisha.
In June 2022, he reportedly reacted to a Russian missile attack on a residential block in the Shevchenkivskyi district of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, by writing in a WhatsApp message saying it was “extremely difficult to call all this anything but terror,” the BBC reported.
The message was then deleted, and Antov wrote on social media that he supported Putin, was a “patriot of my country” and backed the war. He said the message was a misunderstanding and written by someone whose opinion on the “special military operation in Ukraine” he strongly disagreed with.
The press service of Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) in the Republic of Karelia said: “The circumstances [of Pryakhin’s death] are being clarified, we offer our condolences.”
Investigations are underway into both incidents.
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