The ex publisher of a Soviet-era mouthpiece has became the latest Russian bigwig to die in a fall from a window — one of dozens officials to die under mysterious circumstances in recent months, according to local reports.
Vyacheslav Leontyev, 87, who once led the Communist Party’s Pravda newspaper before the Soviet Union’s collapse, was found dead outside his Moscow apartment complex on Sunday.
Police said he jumped after suffering a “nervous breakdown,” the state-run TASS state news agency reported.
Following Leontyev’s death, exiled journalist Andrey Malgin claimed the late publisher had intimate knowledge of the money funneling through the Communist Party, which remains the second-largest political party in Russia.
“Falls from windows continue,” Malgin wrote on social media, referencing the spate of prominent Russians who have taken fatal plunges in recent years.
Leontyev was allegedly under great strain and suffering from heart problems after his wife was recently hospitalized over a fall, according to the Moskovsky Komsomolets Russian tabloid.
It remains unclear from how high Leontyev fell, with some outlets claiming he fell from the fifth floor, while others claimed it was as high as the seventh floor.
His death comes only a few months after Andrei Badalov, 62, the vice president of Russia’s state-owned oil pipeline monopoly Transneft, died in a reported suicide after falling from his upscale home in Moscow, according to TASS.
Although not a fall, July also saw Russian’s transport minister Roman Starovoit shoot himself in the head in a reported suicide inside his car at his own upscale Moscow neighborhood.
Such deaths have driven speculation that something even more sinister is at play, given that many who have died have been elites critical of the Kremlin and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Back in February, Russian singer Vadim Stroykin, 58, died after falling from the 10th floor of his St. Petersburg apartment just moments after authorities raided his apartment to interrogate him over his donation to the Ukrainian army.
A similar incident occurred last November with ballet dancer Vladimir Shkyarov, a vocal critic of Putin, who reportedly fell 60 feet from a fifth-story window to his death.
Russian authorities said the fall was an accident, blaming painkillers the dancer was taking as a lead up to a spinal operation he was set to undergo.
Between the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022 to March 2023, there had been at least 39 Russian big shots who criticized Putin who had died from sudden falls, sickness and other unexpected causes.
