Another top Russian manager has been found dead in a “ suicide ” that is seen as suspicious.
Pavel Pchelnikov, 52, an executive with the Digital Logistics arm of Russian Railways, was found with a gunshot wound on the balcony of his Moscow home.
Recently he has posted seemingly happy holiday pictures and an investigation is formally underway into his death even though the initial version is that he took his own life.
He was found in the morning on the balcony of his Kolomenskaya Embankment apartment.
News outlet ‘We Can Explain’ today called him latest member of a Russian ‘suicide club’ of senior managers and executives who have died since around the start of the war in Ukraine.
These prominent people were quickly seen by the authorities as having taken their own lives, but in all cases there are said to be grounds for doubt over the cause of death.
Pchelnikov boasted about being "the most experienced PR manager in Russian Railways company”.
“It is known that just a month ago, he was on vacation and willingly posted photos from his holiday on social media,” reported ‘We Can Explain’.
“What could have pushed the man to a desperate act is unknown.”
On 1 September, oil tycoon Ravil Maganov, 67, fell to his death from the sixth floor window of a Moscow hospital.
One report says the chairman of Lukoil - Russia ’s second largest oil company - was “beaten” before he was “thrown out of a window”, however this is not confirmed officially.
His company had voiced opposition to the war in Ukraine.
Strangely, Putin arrived at the elite Central Clinical Hospital very soon after Maganov’s body was found to pay his last respects to final Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who had died at the hospital.
In July, Yuri Voronov, 61, head of a transport and logistics company for a Gazprom-linked company, was found dead in his swimming pool, with a leading friend who is a top criminologist warning of foul play.
Two more deaths of Gazprom-linked executives were reported in elite homes near St Petersburg amid suspicions that apparent suicides may have been murders.
Alexander Tyulakov, 61, a senior Gazprom financial and security official at deputy general director level, was discovered by his lover the day after war started in Ukraine in February.
His neck was in a noose in his £500,000 home .
Yet reports say he had been badly beaten shortly before he “took his own life”, leading to speculation he was under intense pressure.
In the same elite Leninsky gated housing development in Leningrad region three weeks earlier, Leonid Shulman,, 60, head of transport at Gazprom Invest, was found dead with multiple stab wounds in a pool of blood on his bathroom floor.
Billionaire Alexander Subbotin, 43, also linked to Kremlin-friendly energy giant Lukoil where he was a top manager, was found dead in May after “taking advice from shamans”.
One theory is that Subbotin - who also owned a shipping company - was poisoned by toad venom triggering a heart attack.
In April, wealthy Vladislav Avayev, 51, a former Kremlin official, appeared to have taken his own life after killing his wife Yelena, 47, and daughter, 13.
He had high level links to leading Russian financial institution Gazprombank.
Friends have disputed reports that he was jealous after his wife admitted she was pregnant by their driver.
There are claims he had access to the financial secrets of the Kremlin elite.
Several days later multimillionaire Sergey Protosenya, 55, was found hanged in Spain, after evidently killing with an axe his wife Natalia, 53, and their teenage daughter, Maria.
He was a former deputy chairman of Novatek, a company also closely linked to the Kremlin.
There have also been questions over the death of Putin’s point man for developing Russia’s vast Arctic resources who “fell overboard” to his death from a boat sailing off the country’s Pacific coast.
Ivan Pechorin, 39, had recently attended a major conference hosted by the Kremlin warmonger in Vladivostok.
The high-flyer was managing director of Putin’s Far East and Arctic Development Corporation.
And in another case a mobile phone multi-millionaire and his wife were found stabbed to death in another case that has raised questions.
Naked Yevgeny Palant, 47, and his wife Olga, 50, both Ukrainian-born, were found with multiple knife wounds by their daughter Polina, 20.
Immediate briefing to the media claimed the woman took her own life in a jealous rage after Palant said he was leaving her.
Yet this was strongly disputed by the couple’s best friend.
