A top Russian oligarch has been found dead by Putin’s spies after mysteriously falling 110ft from a window at his Moscow home.
Mikhail Rogachev, 64, was the vice-president of Russian oil giant Yukos which was forced out of business for turning against the tyrant president Vladimir Putin.
He was found at the entrance to his building by an employee of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence agency and with injuries characteristic of a plunge, local media said.
TV channels reported that he lived on the tenth floor and that it was a suicide, claiming he had cancer and left a note – which police are now investigating.
But these reports were vehemently denied by his close friends and relatives.
His relatives insisted there were no signs that he was suicidal and he was in a ‘good mood’ shortly before his death.
Rogachev had a long and successful career in some of post-Soviet Russia’s leading companies.
In 2007, he became a deputy general director of Vladimir Potanin’s Norilsk Nickel, with Potanin now Russia’s wealthiest man who has also been sanctioned by Britain as part of Putin’s ‘inner circle’.
Rogachev now joins a long string of unexplained deaths of leading Russian figures under mysterious circumstances.
Lukoil tycoon Ravil Maganov, 67, fell from a window of Moscow’s elite Central Clinical Hospital, also known as the Kremlin Clinic, in September 2022.
Russian state media quickly said his death was a suicide but law enforcement sources said there was no suicide note and there were no CCTV cameras on the section of the building where Maganov fell.
He was then replaced by Vladimir Nekrasov – in October 2023, who died aged 66 of ‘acute heart failure’ in October 2023.
The following month, Russian senator and war backer, Vladimir Lebedev, with close Lukoil links, died suddenly in an unexplained ‘terrible tragedy’ aged 60.
The Russian tycoon was found hanged in his office toilet by his boss.
In March, Lukoil vice-president Vitaly Robertus, 53, became the latest victim of a death curse to haunt Lukoil, a prominent company propping up Putin’s regime.
Then a prominent female judge was found dead after falling from a Moscow high-rise building.
Natalia Larina, 50, was notorious for handling high-profile political and criminal cases, punishing traitors of the Kremlin.
She had been a criminal judge for more than 15 years – and had a reputation for ruling verdicts on cases against opposition political activists.
In December 2023, Vladimir Egorov, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, plunged to his death from a third-floor window in Moscow.
The 46-year-old Egorov was a wealthy and prominent politician in oil-rich Tobolsk in western Siberia.
His corpse was found in the yard of his house, according to reports.
Just weeks prior, the deputy editor of Putin’s favourite propaganda newspaper was found dead aged only 35.
The body of Anna Tsareva, 35, was discovered at her home in the capital’s Bolshoy Tishinsky Lane – nearly a year after the death of her boss Vladimir Sungorkin, 68.
In February of the same year, a top Russian defence official and a key figure in the funding of Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine Marina Yankina, 58, also fell 160ft to her death in St Petersburg.
She was head of the financial support department of the Ministry of Defence for the Western Military District, which is closely involved in the dictator’s invasion.
Earlier this year, the chief editor of the warmonger’s state-run TV empire was also discovered lifeless after a suspected poisoning.
Zoya Konovalova, 48, who ran a channel operating near the frontlines of Mad Vlad’s illegal war, was found alongside her ex-husband.