Investigations have not yet reached definitive conclusions, and in some cases, there are indications of family suicides, in others covert homicides.

Six Russian oligarchs, very close to President Vladimir Putin, have died in somewhat mysterious circumstances since the start of the Ukrainian War, the French newspaper Le Figaro has revealed.

These deaths were in some cases attributed to suicides, in others, there are suspicions of covert murders, according to sources said to be knowledgeable about the methods of revenge carried out by the Kremlin.

All these victims had in common the fact that they were executives of large Russian energy companies, such as Gazprom. According to the French newspaper, there is a possibility, in fact, that some of them committed suicide for fear of bankruptcy because of the sanctions applied by the West, following the invasion of Ukraine, but the alleged murders could be linked to a betrayal of Vladimir Putin.

Le Figaro highlights six Russian millionaires who were found dead along with their families in circumstances that the police investigation could not determine, in all of which a suicide or family crime is suggested. However, the mystery deepens given the victims’ profile and proximity to the Kremlin.

Sergey Protosenya, 55, an executive editor at Russia’s second-largest gas company, Novatek, was found dead on April 20. He was found in the garden of his mansion in Lloret del Mar, Spain. He was killed by hanging and, next to him, were the corpses of his wife Natalya (53 years old) and daughter Maria (16 years old), who were stabbed. The Spanish police are investigating the hypothesis of a double homicide, followed by the suicide of Protosenya, an oligarch who had a fortune valued at more than 400 million euros.

The day before, on April 19, the bodies of Vladislav Avaev, who had been Gazprombank vice president and Kremlin minister, and his wife and daughter, were discovered in a Moscow apartment. The corpses had been shot with a gun found next to the oligarch’s body, and the apartment was locked from the inside, so the suicide theory gains strength.

The cases of Protosenya and Avaev are the most emblematic, but at the end of January, four deaths came to attention. Leonid Schulman, the 60-year-old director of Gazprom, was found dead in the bathroom of his St.

Interestingly, the deputy director of Gazprom, Alexander Tyulyakov, 61, was also found hanged at home, also in the St. Petersburg region. Oil tycoon Mikhail Watford, 66, was also found hanged in the garage of his mansion on the outskirts of London.

The stranger was the case of Vasily Melnikov, who had been an employee of the medical equipment company MedStom, found dead with his wife and two children (ages 4 and 10) in an apartment in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod, where no trace of fight or break-in was found.

It is worth remembering that recently there were also news that Roman Abramovich, the oligarch who owns Chelsea, had emerged with symptoms of poisoning, something that has not been confirmed.

Source: With Agencies