The body of a Russian lawyer is found in Kazan – apparently he fell out of the window. It is not the first death of this kind.
Moscow – The chain of mysterious "window accidents" in Russia is one link richer. On Thursday morning, according to the US magazine Newsweek, the body of 42-year-old district judge Artem Bartenev was found near his estate in the capital of the western Russian republic of Tartarstan. The lawyer, whom Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed as a judge by decree on July 14, 2022, had fallen 12 floors, according to local media.
Bartenev handled administrative and civil cases at the Kirovsky District Court in the city of Kazan. On the day of his death, the father of two daughters was supposed to lead a trial, according to local news channel Kazan 24. The Russian Investigative Committee, which contacted Newsweek for comment, is reportedly still investigating the circumstances of the death.
Not the first mysterious death among Russia's functional elite
Bartenev is not the first member of the Russian state and functional elite to have died under unusual or at least unexplained circumstances since the beginning of the Ukraine war. Newsweek has compiled some of these mysterious cases and comes up with nine deaths in a video. On Wikipedia there are corresponding lists with over 30 entries.
On June 4, 62-year-old Yuri Demin died after falling from the second floor of his dacha in the city of Sysert, Russian media outlet Tolk News reported. The man was the former head of the State Inspectorate of Road Safety in the Sverdlovsk Region.
On September 1, 2022, the body of Ravil Maganov, chairman of Russian oil giant Lukoil, was found under a window of the central hospital in Moscow. He was undergoing treatment there for heart problems and depression.
Russian President Vladimir Putin. Since the war he started against Ukraine, mysterious deaths have been piling up among Russia's elite. (Archive photo) © Sergei Karpukhin/Pool/doa
On September 21, Anatoly Gerashchenko, former head of the Moscow Institute of Aviation, was hit. According to a report in the Russian newspaper Izvestia, the scientist, who was still working as a consultant for the institute, died in the research institute when he fell down stairs "from a great height".
Russia: Influential Putin critics die again and again
On December 25, 2022, Russian politician Pavel Antov was found dead after falling from a hotel window in the Indian state of Odisha. Antov, who was a member of Putin's United Russia party, had criticized Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Just two days earlier, his travel companion and businessman Vladimir Bidenov had died of a heart attack in the same hotel. Antov was also a successful businessman. In 2019, Forbes estimated his fortune at around $140 million, putting him at the top of the list of the richest officials in Russia, as reported by Newsweek.
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On February 16, 2023, at the age of 58, Marina Yankina, head of the financial support department of the Russian Ministry of Defense, died after falling from the 16th floor in St. Petersburg, local media reported. She had previously criticized the Kremlin for Russian losses in Ukraine.
On May 20, 2023, Russian Deputy Minister of Higher Education Pyotr Kucherenko died on a flight from Cuba back to Russia. According to the ministry, his family believes that Kucherenko died of heart problems. Particularly explosive: In a conversation with a journalist friend critical of Russia, Kucherenko described the Ukraine war as a "fascist invasion" a few weeks after it began. In doing so, he twice violated the official language in Putin's Russia, according to which the "special military operation" is not a war and is directed against Ukrainian fascists, from whom Ukraine must be liberated. (Robert Wagner)
