Anatoly Geraschchenko was 73 years old. He had long headed the Moscow Aviation Institute, an industrial body closely linked to the Ministry of Defence, and therefore very closely linked to the heart of power in Moscow. According to the official version released on Wednesday, September 21, he fell down the stairs of the Institute, his body rolled down several flights of stairs and he died instantly. “It is a colossal loss for our scientific community.“, says the Institute. If this death was isolated, we would hardly pay attention to it. Only here, on September 10, another egg of the Russian aeronautical world had also died in strange circumstances. Ivan Pechorin ran the aviation business in the Russian Far East. And he died right after meeting Vladimir Putin at the Vladivostok Economic Forum. The next day he fell from a sailboat and drowned, his body was recovered two days later. Ivan Pechorin was 39 years old and according to the official version, he could not swim. The coincidence is disturbing.
If we extend to the entire Russian economic and technological milieu, we therefore reach this figure of 14 deaths in less than 8 months, roughly since the start of the war in Ukraine. First there are the suicides, or presented as such: several officials of the gas giant Gazprom (Leonid Shulman, Alexander Tyulakov, Vladislav Avayev). Each time, we found pseudo-notes explaining the suicide next to their corpses. In Avayev’s case, his wife and 13-year-old daughter were also found dead. “Suicide” also, by hanging, for the former boss of Novatek, another gas company. Then there are the “accidents”, in particular for two leaders of the oil company Lukoil, who died in May and September: Alexander Subotin, victim of a heart attack during “a shamanic ceremony in a basement” ; and more recently at the beginning of September Ravil Maganov, who fell from a 6th floor window while being treated in a major hospital in Moscow. To this must be added a death after a fall from a cliff near Sochi in the Black Sea ( in May), a shooting death near Saint-Petersburg (in July), and even another fatal fall (in August) in an apartment in Washington in the United States, that of Dan Rapoport, a businessman openly critical of Screw Putin.
Not all of them were outspoken critics of Vladimir Putin. Some yes: Dan Rapoport, therefore, and also the leaders of the private oil company Lukoil, which in March had denounced the war in Ukraine. For the others we don’t know. Had they made criticisms in private? Were they in possession of too confidential information? Are there really accidental deaths in the lot? In any case, the list is too long to be a series of coincidences. Especially since two other billionaires, Anatoli Tchoubais and Roman Abramovich, have survived strange accidents. Russia is the heir to the method of the Soviet KGB and Stalin in this matter: the elimination of suspects or critics. Always of course denying any responsibility.