Many members of the Russian elite have died in suspicious and mysterious ways since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Analysts say the reasons are complex but also typical of Russian high politics.
Although an exact and reliable number does not exist due to Russia’s closed nature, according to Western agencies and Russian activists, more than 75 prominent individuals from Russia’s political, military, and business circles have died under suspicious or unexplained circumstances from the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022 to July 2025.
This includes oligarchs, politicians, military officials, and people connected to state structures.
Official Moscow has described their deaths as suicides, falls from windows, accidental poisonings, heart attacks, or violent deaths in family tragedies.
The most recent such case is the death of Roman Starovoyt.
His body was found in Moscow’s Odintsovo district, where many members of the Russian elite live. Russian media reported that he committed suicide in a park using a pistol that had been given to him by President Putin.
Starovoyt had been Minister of Transport since May 2024, and before that, he was the governor of the Kursk region, which was attacked by Ukrainian forces in August 2024.
Kyiv’s military success in that region humiliated Russia. Starovoyt was dismissed from his ministerial post shortly before his suicide.
Falls from windows, bathtub, and pool drownings
Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a plane crash two months after launching a rebellion against President Putin with his Wagner mercenary army.
He and his men played a significant role in the first year of the war in Ukraine, but when they expressed dissatisfaction with how the war was being conducted and set out toward Moscow in a military campaign, it became clear they wouldn’t last long. Today, neither he nor his group exists.
One of the few companies in Russia that cautiously voiced opposition to the invasion of Ukraine at the beginning, explaining that such a war would weaken the economy, was Lukoil.
The president of that energy giant, Ravil Maganov, died after an alleged fall from a hospital window in Moscow.
Falling from windows also ended the lives of oligarch Pavel Antov and Marina Yankina, the financial director of the Western Military District.
Suicide by hanging was committed by Sergei Protosenya, former executive director of Novatek, senior Gazprom manager Alexander Tyulyakov, and Roman Malik, a colonel responsible for mobilization.
The list continues with drownings in bathtubs and pools, suffocations, falls down stairs, and the most frequently cited cause of death: heart attack.
Russian media have never investigated what lies behind this large number of deaths among influential people, and official Moscow would merely express condolences and ignore questions from Western media.
An atmosphere of fear
Russian professors and analysts who have fled to the West mostly fear commenting on these deaths under their real names.
However, they suggest that these are the result of complex power struggles, control over resources, and the swift elimination of potential threats to the regime.
All of this creates an additional atmosphere of fear and insecurity within the elite, which further strengthens authoritarian control and deters them from opposing the regime.
In that sense, suspicious deaths also serve as a warning to those who might become dissidents or pose a threat.
This is echoed by Professor Jeffrey Winters, a political scientist from the University of Illinois and author of the book Oligarchs, who emphasizes that it is nearly impossible to kill wealthy people in Russia without state approval.
“These are billionaires with bodyguards, access to the best medical care, private drivers, and all the top-tier protection money can buy,” he said.
“I can’t state it directly, but it seems logical that they’re being removed by the same hand that allowed them to become rich, influential, or politically powerful.”
Disloyalty equals death
Ukraine uses all these suspicious deaths to point to the ruthlessness and cruelty of the Russian regime and to explain to the West what Ukrainians are truly fighting against.
Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak stated that in Russia, disloyalty means death.
Former White House advisor on Russia and Kremlin expert Fiona Hill said not all deaths should be lumped together or buried under conspiracy theories, but neither should one be surprised that a non-democratic regime doesn’t function in a democratic way.
In an interview, Hill emphasized that this is just one segment of Russia’s ongoing war with the West.
“Russia has hardened as an adversary in ways we probably didn’t fully foresee,” she said. Poisonings, assassinations, cyberattacks, sabotage, and threats to infrastructure are just part of the same tactic, she concluded.
The “sudden death syndrome of influential Russians” did not begin with the invasion of Ukraine.
Even before the attack on Ukraine, at least 38 deaths of businessmen who were at some point close to the Kremlin were explained by unfortunate or mysterious circumstances.
The most well-known case is that of oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who committed suicide in his home near London.
United Kingdom (UK) investigators said after their inquiry that they found no evidence of a violent death, but in the realm of social media, many did not believe that explanation.
Just as many today do not believe that influential and wealthy Russians are that careless or mentally unstable.
