A senior Russian defence official has mysteriously died after falling from a window of a high-rise building.
Marina Yankina was the head of the financial support department of the Ministry of Defense for the Western Military District, which is closely involved in Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
She was found dead below the windows of a house in St Petersburg, according to the Telegram channel "Mash on the Moika".
Mash is a Russian online newspaper, part of the News Media [ru] media holding.
The post on the social media app, says the 58-year-old's body was found on Wednesday morning and she was said to have left documents on the 16th-floor balcony.
Reports say that shortly before the fall, she called her ex-husband and told him about what she was going to do and where she would leave things and also asked to call the police.
A few minutes after the call, she was found dead.
Mash on the Moika wrote: "According to our information, the husband lived in the house from the balcony of which the fall occurred. The motives continue to be clarified - according to the latest data, the woman had health problems.
"Her career developed rapidly: in five years, a woman grew from an ordinary employee to the head of the entire department."
Ms Yankina has become the latest government worker to die in mysterious circumstances. Local media say she killed herself, but there is scepticism around this after previous Putin ally deaths.
Last month, the former prime minister of an oil-rich Russian region Magomed Abdulayev, 61, was rammed by a car while crossing a street.
In September, Pavel Pchelnikov, former director of communications at Digital Logistics, a subsidiary of Russian Railways, was found dead on his balcony. Authorities labelled his death as suicide and refused to say anything further.
Also in September, oil tycoon Ravil Maganov reportedly 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.
The authorities say they are investigating all the details and reasons for what happened with Ms Yankina's death.
The press service of the Western Military District Fontanka confirmed that the woman was their employee.
