- From plane crashes to shootings and poisonings, many people who have crossed the Russian president have suddenly died or become ill
Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin is believed to have been killed in a plane crash north of Moscow on Wednesday evening.
He has not been confirmed dead but was on the plane’s passenger list, and Russian authorities said there were no survivors.
Prigozhin was formerly an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin but became an enemy after launching an armed mutiny against the president in late June
He’s not the first of Putin’s enemies to suffer a mysterious death or near-death experience.
What happened to Yevgeny Prigozhin?
Prigozhin was once a close associate of Putin, but became an enemy after leading what Russian officials described as an “armed mutiny” in June.
In 2014, he founded Wagner Group, a paramilitary organisation that has fought in Libya, Syria, the Central African Republic and Mali, among other countries.
The mercenaries were supporting the Kremlin in the war in Ukraine, until Prigozhin called for an armed rebellion and pledged to oust Russia’s military leadership.
The mutiny was ended by an apparent Kremlin deal which saw Prigozhin agree to relocate to neighbouring Belarus.
Prigozhin posted a video address on Monday which he suggested was filmed in Africa.
Unconfirmed Russian media reports said that Prigozhin and his associates had attended a meeting on Wednesday with officials from the Russian Defence Ministry.
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Online flight tracker Flightradar24 showed that the Embraer plane (registration number RA-02795) carrying Prigozhin had dropped off the radar at 6:11pm MSK (Thursday, 1:11am AEST).
There were reportedly 10 people on board, and Prigozhin’s name was on the passenger list.
Rescuers had recovered seven bodies from the scene, TASS reported.
Amid fevered speculation and an absence of verifiable facts, some have pointed the finger of blame at the Russian state, others at Ukraine which was due to mark its Independence Day on Thursday.
Alexei Navalny poisoned in Siberia
Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, was flown to Germany in August 2020 for medical treatment after being poisoned in Siberia with what Western experts concluded was the military nerve agent Novichok.
Russia has denied any involvement.
In early August, Navalny had an extra 19 years in a maximum security penal colony added to his jail term.
He was already serving sentences totalling 11-and-a-half years on fraud and other charges that he says are also bogus. His political movement has been outlawed and declared “extremist”.
Sergei Skripal’s Novichok poisoning
A former Russian double agent who passed secrets to British intelligence, Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a bench outside a shopping centre in the English cathedral city of Salisbury in March 2018.
They were taken to hospital in critical condition, and British officials said they had been poisoned – like Navalny – with Novichok, a group of nerve agents developed by the Soviet military in the 1970s and 1980s.
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Both Skripal and his daughter survived.
Russia has denied any role in the poisoning and said Britain was whipping up anti-Russian hysteria.
Pavel Antov’s hotel death
Russian politician and millionaire Pavel Antov had been critical of Putin’s war with Ukraine.
In June 2022, Russian media published a WhatsApp message attributed to Antov that said a Kremlin missile bombardment on Ukraine was “terrorism”.
Antov took to the Russian social media network VK to deny writing the message, insisting that he supported Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.
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In December 2022, he died after reportedly falling from a hotel room in India.
The 65-year-old’s body was found in a pool of blood outside his lodgings in the eastern state of Odisha, where he was on holiday with three other Russian nationals.
His death came two days after another member of the travel party, Vladimir Bidenov, was found unconscious after suffering an apparent heart attack.
Deaths in oil and energy industry
In September 2022, Ravil Maganov – chairman of oil company Lukoil – died after falling from a hospital window in Moscow, two sources familiar with the situation told Reuters, confirming reports by several Russian media.
But circumstances surrounding his fall were unclear.
Lukoil took a public stand over Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Source: AAP / Stephanie Lecocq / EPA
Russian state news agency TASS reported the death as a suicide, citing a law enforcement source.
In a statement, the company said he died “following a severe illness”.
A former board member of Lukoil, Alexander Subbotin, was found dead in Moscow in May 2022.
Lukoil had taken a public stand over Russia’s actions in Ukraine, with the company’s board of directors expressing its concern over the “tragic events” and calling for the “soonest possible end to armed conflict”.
These Russian businessmen have died in unusual circumstances. Why?
There have also been several deaths reported tied to Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom.
Gazprom’s head of transport Leonid Shulman was found dead in a cottage, and executive Alexander Tyulakov was found dead in his St. Petersburg home the morning after Russia invaded Ukraine.
The Polish plane crash
In 2010, Poland’s president Lech Kaczyński and 95 others were killed in a plane crash in Russia.
Polish officials said the crash was a “political assassination” orchestrated by the Kremlin.
Russia has denied the allegations.
In 2022, a Polish government commission released a report alleging an intentional detonation of planted explosives caused the crash.
The poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko
Alexander Litvinenko, an ex-KGB agent and outspoken critic of Putin, died in 2006 aged 43 after drinking green tea laced with polonium-210, a rare and potent radioactive isotope, at London’s Millennium Hotel, British officials have said.
Putin probably approved the killing, a British inquiry concluded in 2016.
The Kremlin has denied involvement.
What were Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner mercenaries doing in Africa?
An inquiry led by a senior British judge found that former KGB bodyguard Andrei Lugovoy and another Russian, Dmitry Kovtun, carried out the killing as part of an operation that he said was probably directed by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB.
Litvinenko fled Russia for Britain six years to the day before he was poisoned.
Whistleblower killed while jogging
Alexander Perepilichny was found dead near his luxury home in an exclusive gated estate outside London after he had been out jogging in November 2012.
The 44-year-old Russian sought refuge in Britain in 2009 after helping a Swiss investigation into a Russian money laundering scheme.
His sudden death raised suggestions he might have been murdered.
British police ruled out foul play despite suspicions he might have been murdered with a rare poison.
A pre-inquest hearing heard that traces of a rare and deadly poison from the gelsemium plant were found in his stomach.
Perepilichny had enjoyed a large bowl of soup containing sorrel, a popular Russian dish.
Russia denied involvement.
Anna Politkovskaya
Journalist Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead outside her flat in Moscow in 2006, after returning home from the supermarket.
She was a journalist who reported on human rights abuses and was critical of Vladimir Putin.
Her assassination took place on Putin’s birthday.
The murder of Politkovskaya provoked an outcry in the West and underlined concerns about the dangers reporters working in Russia faced.
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