Russian lawmaker Vladimir Egorov was discovered dead in his courtyard, according to local media, adding to the growing list of the country’s politicians who have died in unusual circumstances in recent months.
Egorov, 46, was a deputy from Putin’s United Russia party in the Tobolsk City Duma, in Western Siberia. According to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, there were no “external signs of criminal death” on his body. Investigators “could not confirm the information about the circumstances of the deputy’s death” while they are “still conducting an autopsy”, the newspaper wrote.
However, the Tobolsk City Duma seemed to dispute the investigators’ findings, asserting that Mr. Egorov passed away “as a result of an accident” in an obituary published on social media.
The regional Duma commended Mr. Egorov for adopting “an active part in the social and political life of the city” and for giving “comprehensive support to the participants of the Special Military Operation – as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is officially called in the country – and the families of military personnel”.
Mr. Egorov is hardly the first prominent Russian military or political figure to die inexplicably. The most sensational death was that last August of Wagner mercenary leader Evgeny Prigozhin, whose private plane mysteriously exploded halfway between Moscow and St. Petersburg. Prigozhin, once considered Putin’s right-hand man, had resoundingly defied Kremlin power by organizing a short-lived mutiny with thousands of soldiers in late June.
Other prominent Russians who have passed away recently include Ravil Maganov, the chair of Lukoil, the nation’s second-largest oil and gas business, who spoke out against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine before reportedly. plunging through a hospital window in Moscow.
A similar fate befell sausage magnate-turned-lawyer Pavel Antov, who inexplicably plummeted in December 2022 from the third-floor window of a hotel room in India.
Deputy Minister of Science Pyotr Kucherenko passed away in May following a medical incident while traveling back from a business trip to Cuba on an aircraft with a Russian felegation. According to a journalist who claimed to have communicated with Kucherenko in the months before his passing, Kucherenko was afraid for his own safety and felt like a captive held by the Russian government.
