Ivan Pechorin: the latest Russian oligarch to die under 'mysterious' circumstances

Since Putin began his war on Ukraine, many Russian oligarchs have lost their lives. And no, they haven't taken up arms for Russia, quite the contrary.

Those who have died are high-profile Russian businessmen who have dared to speak out against Putin's war. And all of them have died under rather suspicious, mysterious circumstances.

Ivan Pechorin is the latest Russian oligarch to die under mysterious circumstances. According to various news outlets, Ivan Pechorin was found dead after he fell out of a motorboat in the Sea of Japan close to the city of Vladivostok. Pechorin's body was found on September 12.

Photo credit: Corporation for the Development of the Far East and the Arctic

Pechorin was the general manager of Russia's the Far East and Arctic Development Corporation. This public-private cooperation agency is tasked with providing companies operating in remote areas of Russia with the transportation, engineering, and energy infrastructures they need.

Photo: wikimedia commons

"Ivan's death is an irreparable loss for friends and colleagues, a great loss for the company," reads the statement from the Far East and Arctic Development Corporation.

Ivan Pechorin was, in fact, considered the key man of the Kremlin in the Arctic. His death, however, is only the latest in a series of tragic events affecting Russian oligarchs.

Ravil Maganov also died passed away recently under suspicious circumstances. The 67-year-old chairman of the board of directors of Lukoil, the Russian oil giant, the 2nd largest Russian energy company and one of the most important in the world.

Russian law enforcement agencies told Tass that Maganov was being treated at Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital following a heart attack and that the Russian tycoon "took his own life" in that facility by letting himself fall from a window.

According to the Russian website Mash, the manager threw himself from the sixth floor of the hospital, where he was being treated for heart problems. The website claims he was also diagnosed with a form of depression.

In the press release issued by Lukoil, however, the confirmation of the death of the Russian oligarch makes no reference to the cause of death, only that Maganov "passed away following a severe illness".

Lukoil group was the first company, at the beginning of March 2022, to publicly declare its opposition to the war. On April 20, its chairman and main shareholder, Vagit Alekperov (pictured), resigned after being placed on the new list of Russian personalities sanctioned by the United Kingdom.

At the beginning of July, the Daily Mail reported the death of another well-known Russian businessman, Yuriy Voronov, who was shot dead and found lifeless in the swimming pool of his villa, not far from St. Petersburg. Voronov was another important figure in the Russian business world and linked to the Gazprom company. According to the British newspaper, Russian investigators attributed his death to a "dispute with business partners"

Lukoil, on the other hand, was linked to Alexander Subbotin, whose death, reported by the Moscow Times newspaper and later confirmed by the Russian news agency TASS and other international media, represented the eighth death of a Russian oligarch since the beginning of 2022.

According to TASS, the former Lukoil manager died of a heart attack after undergoing a therapeutic session with a shaman along with his wife. It was treatment the couple was apparently used often.

Photo by Pasha Chusovitin on Unsplash

The treatment Subbotin allegedly underwent involves injecting toad venom through cuts into specially made wounds on the body. The purpose? To strengthen the immune system.
Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash

The Subbotin family is closely linked to the Lukoil company, the second largest oil company in Russia and one of the most important in the world. In addition to Alexander, his brother Valery (pictured left) also held senior positions at the oil giant before resigning from his position as Lukoil's Vice President of Oil Purchases and Sales and from the company's board of directors.

According to CNN, the other Russian company from which five of the eight Russian figures who have died since January 2022 are linked in one way or another is the Russian energy giant Gazprom.

The latest death, shortly before that of Alexander Subbotin, was that of 37-year-old Andrei Krukovsky on May 5, 2022. Krukovsky was the manager of a Gazprom-owned ski resort in Krasnaya Polyana, a destination that is popular with Russian dignitaries. In the photo you can see Dmitry Medvedev (right) with Vladimir Putin during a skiing holiday in this very place in southern Russia.

Andrei Krukovsky reportedly died after falling off a cliff in Sochi. Russia's TASS news agency tweeted: "The general director of the Krasnaya Polyana resort in the Krasnodar region, Andrei Krukovsky, died in a fall on the way to the Achipsin Fortress. His death follows chronologically two other deaths of two well-known Russians Oligarchs, Vladislav Avayev and Sergei Protosenya, which happened five days apart, one in Moscow, the other in the Spanish seaside resort of Lloret del Mar.

On April 21, the body of Vladislav Avayev, a former Kremlin official and deputy chairman of Gazprombank, was found lifeless in his luxurious apartment in Moscow. In addition to his body and the weapon, the bodies of Yelena, his wife, and Maria, the couple's 13-year-old daughter, were apparently also found at the crime scene. Media such as Business Insider report speculation that Yelena is expecting a child.

A similar scenario presented itself to the Catalan police, in Lloret del Mar, Spain: investigators found the body of Sergej Protosenja hanging from a tree in his garden. Protosenja's wife and 18-year-old daughter were also found dead at the Spanish holiday resort, butchered with an axe.

Fedor, the eldest son of the former Novatek chairman, seems unconvinced by the Catalan police's hypothesis that the Russian billionaire took his own life after killing his wife and daughter. Speaking to the Daily Mail, the 22-year-old dismisses the hypothesis put forward by the Catalan police: "My father was not a murderer," adding: "He loved my mother and especially my sister Maria. She was his princess. He would have never done anything bad to them. I don't know what happened last night but I know my father didn't hurt them.

On February 28, 2022, 66-year-old Mikhail Watford, a Russian billionaire of Ukrainian descent, was found dead in suspicious circumstances. However, this time the death did not occur in Russia, but in England, in the garage of the estate owned by the Russian tycoon in the Surrey countryside. British police ruled out a murder, and The Sun magazine reported that a family friend said Watford''s mental state had been "seriously shaken" by the war in Ukraine.

On February 25, 2022, three days before the death of Mikhail Watford, another top Gazprom executive - Alexander Tyulakov - mysteriously died. According to the investigators, reported by the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, the Russian tycoon allegedly committed suicide in the garage of his home in Leninsky near Leningrad.

Just over a month earlier, another member of Russia business elite linked to the Gazprom giant died: Leonid Shulman, head of Gazprom Invest's transport division. Russia'ss state-run news agency Ria Novosti also reported that a message was found at the scene that allegedly prompted investigators to review the suicide hypothesis.

The fifth dead Russian businessman was Vasily Melnikov, entrepreneur and owner of MedStom, a medical supplies company, who died near Nizhny Novgorod on March 23. According to reports, lacerations were found on his body, as well as on the bodies of his wife and two children, aged 4 and 10. According to several newspapers, MedStorm is on the brink of bankruptcy as a result of Western sanctions.

Russia, Spain and the United Kingdom were the scenes of these deaths, over which a veil of mystery still seems to hang. The dynamics of the events are not clear, and in some cases the hypotheses put forward by investigators have not convinced those who knew these individuals well. However justified the doubts may be, the fact is that these are real tragedies in the context of a war that has already claimed many lives.