I guess that if guns are the leading cause of death in America, then windows must be the leading cause of death in Russia. What is it with these people anyhow? They get near a window and experience some kind of vertigo? Or, the floors in front of the windows are covered in butter all the time? What could it be? (Pro tip: It’s Vladimir’s preferred method, over Polonium tea.)
The veteran publisher died on Saturday evening and police are probing whether it was an accident, suicide or foul play.
Exiled journalist Andrey Malgin posted on the ‘strange death’, saying: ‘The window falls continue….
‘Leontyev, fell from a window. He was found near his home on Molodogvardeyskaya Street, where he lived.’
Suggesting he could have been secretly wealthy, Malgin – who knew him – wrote: ‘He gave the impression of a sort of underground millionaire….
‘He knew a lot about the “Party’s money” — the Pravda publishing house was the most profitable enterprise in the business empire of the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union] Central Committee.’
Unconfirmed reports said Leontyev had been having health problems.
Russia has suffered a spate of deaths of leading managers of major companies during and immediately before the war in Ukraine.
Last month former St Petersburg transport boss Alexander Fedotov’s body was found outside the five-star Skypoint Luxe – former Sheraton – hotel at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo international airport.
He had been staying on a business trip in a room on a ‘high floor’ in the hotel, according to reports.
A criminal investigation is underway with reports saying no suicide note was found.
He was linked to Vladimir Putin’s transport minister Roman Starovoit, 53, whose death in July – officially designated as suicide hours after Putin fired him – remains highly suspicious amid claims he had been ‘tortured’ before being ‘murdered’.
Among dozens of deaths seen as suspicions are Lukoil tycoon Ravil Maganov, 67, who fell from a window of Moscow’s elite Central Clinical Hospital, also known as the Kremlin clinic, in September 2022.
He was replaced by Vladimir Nekrasov – who died aged 66 of “acute heart failure” in October 2023.
Both Maganov and Nekrasov had opposed Putin’s war.
The following month, Russian senator and war backer, Vladimir Lebedev, with close Lukoil links, died suddenly in an unexplained “terrible tragedy” aged 60.
In March, 2024, Lukoil vice-president Vitaly Robertus, 53, was found hanged in his office toilet.
Separately, Pavel Antov, 65, a Russian sausage tycoon and politician, fell from a hotel window in India in December 2022.
Marina Yankina, 58, a defence official in charge of war money, died in February 2023 after falling 160ft to her death in St Petersburg.
Former oil company vice president Mikhail Rogachev, 64, died after falling from his tenth-floor apartment in Moscow in October 2024.
He had been a senior executive at Yukos, an oil company dismembered by Putin and his cronies.
In July this year, Transneft vice-president Andrey Badalov, 62, fell to his death from the elite tower block where he lived on Moscow’s Rublevskoye Highway.
Wheeee! It’s enough to make you dizzy, all these bodies falling from windows — and not just in Russia, that one guy fell out the window in India. I guess the issue I would look up now, if I was *investigating* this, is “What did Pravda do to piss off Putin?” If you can come up with a plausible answer to that question, you will know the answer. Not that you’re going to do anything with said answer, unless you fully intend to never take stairs or an elevator again in your natural life.
But that probably won’t save you, as the guy found hanged in the toilet found out. And the perfectly awful part about this, is that these are the kind of strongarm tactics that don’t exist in this country, but we have people in our government who would love nothing more than to have these kinds of solutions to their enemies.
By the “people in our government” you mean Donald himself, of course… he who exults in playing tough guy and encourages his disciples to do the thuggery for him because he’s chickenshit … and that desire to punish opponents infiltrates every level of the Trumpian regime. Donald said Putin was “smart” to invade Ukraine; you can bet he’s jealous of Vlad’s ability to have enemies defenestrated at will.
“round up the usual suspects”…Police captain Louie in Casablanca after Bogart shoots the SS officer.