Bhubaneswar: A fortune of more than USD 100 million, an elected politician of Russia, there was hardly a reason for Mr Pavel Antov to have chosen a tribal-dominated, Maoist-infested district of a State on the eastern coastline of India, to celebrate his birthday.
Antov’s death by falling from the third floor of a hotel in Odisha’s Rayagada, is not quite comprehendible, especially when it occured within 48 hours of the death of his party colleague Vladimir Budanov (61) due to a heart stroke.
The multi-millionaire was on vacation in the Rayagada where he was celebrating his 65th birthday. According to the police, he was allegedly found dead having fallen out of a third-floor hotel window. Antov, a sausage multi-millionaire and elected politician, had reportedly criticised Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as “terror”.
Antov was a member of Putin’s United Russia party. This is not the first case when a Putin critic has died mysteriously. Taking 2022 alone, at least two dozen Russian billionaires have met a similar fate, the striking thing that was common in the cases – condemnation of the Ukraine invasion.
The mysterious deaths of Antov and Budnov last week drew further attention to the ever-increasing number of suspicious cases among the oligarchs and critics of President Putin, raising questions on whether they have become all too common, to be wholly coincidental.
Let us take a look at similar deaths of the Who’s Who of Russia this year:
- Leonid Shulman, Director of transport of Gazprom;
- Igor Nosov, CEO of the Russian Far East and Arctic Development Corporation;
- Mikhail Watford, Businessman;
- Sergey Protosenya, Former deputy chairman of Novatek;
- Yuri Voronov, CEO of Astra Shipping, a subcontractor of Gazprom;
- Ravil Maganov, Chairman of Lukoil,
- Vladimir Sungorkin, Editor-in-chief of Komsomolskaya Pravda;
- Alexander Buzakov, Director General of the Admiralty Shipyards and
- Pavel Antov, Vice-President of “Vladmirsky Standart” company and MP of Vladimir legislative assembly.
While the cops in Odisha are watching their words and moves in this high-profile Rayagada case, there are a few questions being pondered upon: Why was Antov in Rayagada?; Was he trying to evade ‘attention’?; and Whether the duo was eliminated for being vocal about Ukraine aggression?
