Russian Oligarchs' Penchant for Accidents, Suicide

"When people die suddenly in Russia, you usually assume it's suspicious until you rule it out."

"It becomes a lot more suspicious when all those people die in strange ways and all are connected in some way to the oil and gas business."

"Putin is behind all of them, because he is the ultimate beneficiary. He is like the mafia boss."

Bill Browder, former foreign investor in Russia 

"It could be security forces muscling into the energy sector. [But] these are guesses."

"We are just making guesses about a situation that is by definition opaque."

"Strange things happen. History is not required to make sense."

Seva Gunitsky, political science professor, University of Toronto

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Lukoil Vice-President Ravil Maganov in 2019. Maganov was recently reported to have died after falling from a hospital window. Photo by Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik/AFP via Getty ImagesFile

 

There is nothing particularly new about political assassinations in Russia. They happen with regularity; critics of the regime, its president, suffer the consequences. Which doesn't stop the outrage of principled people from breaking out of their cocoon of self-preservation from time to time, succumbing to their outrage in however a brief period of relieving themselves of the massive irritation they feel over the Kremlin's political machinations in league with their president's ambitions.

 

From the time of the February invasion of Ukraine bizarre deaths of prominent, wealthy, sometimes influential businessmen have occurred. Mysterious deaths that on occasion also lethally victimize members of their families. Mysterious mostly because the reason for these deaths remains unknown. And those responsible are not about to enlighten the puzzled onlookers who may themselves be the next victims.

 

From mere days leading up to the invasion of Ukraine to the present time, a line of up to eleven oligarchs and business executives, most with links to Russia's largest corporations, and mostly involved with energy, have been dispatched in accidents, suicides, murder-suicides and suddenly-fatal health issues. One prominent Russian fell overboard from a speeding boat in the Sea of Japan, just this past Saturday.

 

And just before that occurred, the vice-president of Lukoil energy giant lost his balance and fell from a window of a hospital where he was being treated for an undisclosed malady. The series of strange fatalities has aroused visions of a widespread menace despite Russia being a country where assassinations are not uncommon. 

 

Bill Browder considers most of those deaths were simply murder scenes, orchestrated by business rivals for greater assets from figures in the energy industry, awash with wealth despite Western sanctions. He believes these deaths were planned by the FSB the main security-intelligence service of the country, and the trail points directly to Vladimir Putin extracting his cut of resulting proceeds.

Not to be overlooked is that some of the dead had been incautious enough to speak their opposition of the war. "Let's not forget that Putin does mix money and politics and I think he goes after his enemies in both cases with equal amounts of cruelty and potentially violence", said Marcus Kolga, a fellow of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute think-tank.

President Putin lost no time making any measure of opposition to his invasion of Ukraine a proposition of risk for anyone criticizing the "special military operation" that has destroyed towns and villages, laid waste to inner cities, killed thousands of Russian and Ukrainian servicemen and many more thousands of innocent Ukrainian civilians.

Something as offensive as calling the 'special military operation' a war, referring to the brutality involved, or any other type of comment, can net the offender up to 15 years in prison. It's possible that as an alternative of the irreversible state of death, some of those marked out for death would far have preferred the option of 15 years imprisonment, but they had no choice in the matter.

Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow where Lukoil executive Ravil Maganov is said to have died from a fall out of a sixth floor window, September 1, 2022. Photo by Evgenii Bugubaev/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images