Quick, somebody repair the slippery floors and close all the open hospital windows in Moscow. One was obviously responsible for the freak-accident death of Ravil Maganov, the chairman of Russia’s second-largest oil producer, Lukoil. Maganov must have tripped, perhaps on his IV line, before plummeting to his death on Thursday.
And quick, somebody also check all the apartment windows in Washington, where Dan Rapoport, a prominent critic of Vladimir Putin and an open supporter of jailed critic Alexei Navalny, fell out of his luxury apartment building on Aug. 14. But maybe it was suicide; a medical examiner’s report is pending.
It’s more than windows and floors that demand serious inspection. In and around Russia and the world, people who happen to have inconvenient positions or opinions are winding up dead from freak accidents or suicides or gunshot wounds that Russian officials insist were self-inflicted.
