• About Us
  • Who Are We
  • Work With Us
Wednesday, July 16, 2025
No Result
View All Result
The Globe Post
39 °f
New York
44 ° Fri
46 ° Sat
40 ° Sun
41 ° Mon
No Result
View All Result
The Globe Post
No Result
View All Result
Home Opinion

Falling for Putin

Stephen J. Lyons by Stephen J. Lyons
09/15/22
in Opinion
Vladimir Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin. File photo: Wang Zhao AFP

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Isn’t it amazing how unlucky Russian oligarchs can be? They keep getting poisoned by toxic substances and/or falling from high places and/or while being shot in the head and/or stabbed and/or while murdering their family members and/or committing suicide. 

The latest to fall smack into a spate of bad luck was 67-year-old Ravil Maganov, the chairman of Lukoil, Russia’s second-largest oil producer. This month he was going out for a harmless smoke from his hospital room, where he had been recovering from a heart attack, and somehow fell from a high place.

Suicide was listed as the cause of death by Russia’s most-mistrusted state news agency TASS. After all, according to TASS, Maganov was taking anti-depressants.

Lukoil issued a statement that its chairman had “passed away following a serious illness.” Indeed, given the nature of Russian state disinformation these days, choosing to do a swan dive from six stories could be defined as a serious illness.

Maganov’s “suicide” was the sixth such death of high-profile energy magnates in 2022.

CBS News reported that “Lukoil’s former top executive and board member Alexander Subbotin died [of a heart attack] after receiving dubious treatment from a shaman that involved an infusion of poison from a toad.” The shaman’s name is Alexey Pindurin, aka Magua. The toad was identified as a poisonous Australian cane toad.

Magua had given Subbotin his “hangover cure.” The news outlet Mash explained: “They would make an incision on the skin, dripped toad poison there, and after the patient vomited, he allegedly would feel better. Suddenly, he felt unwell, and his heart ached. The shaman decided not to call an ambulance, gave him some usual heart drops and put the billionaire to sleep in the basement, where he later died.”

Hangover cured.

Ongoing List

To help us sort out this cluster of calamities, Reuters and CNN, among other news outlets, have compiled an ongoing list. There is, or was, Leonid Shulman, 60, a mover and shaker at Gazprom Invest. In January of this year he was found dead of stab wounds in a cottage bathroom not far from St. Petersburg. He had been convalescing from a broken leg. Again, cause of death was suicide.

On February 25, another executive at Gazprom, Alexander Tyulakov, 61, was found dead in his garage in St. Petersburg. Cause? You guessed it: suicide.

Mikhail Watford, a Ukrainian-born Russian oil and gas billionaire, 66, was found dead from hanging at his home in Surrey, England, on February 28. A friend said, “His state of mind might have been affected by the situation in the Ukraine. The timing of his death and the invasion of Ukraine was surely not coincidental.”

Ukraine war
An Ukranian soldier walks in Mala Rogan, east of Kharkiv, after Ukrainians reclaimed the village. Photo: Aris Messinis/AFP

Former VP of Gazprombank, Vladislav Avayev, 51, died in his luxury Moscow apartment along with his wife and daughter on April 18. Russian authorities were diligently investigating the deaths as a murder suicide. A neighbor is skeptical of that theory. “He had no reason to do that. He was rich, smart,” she said. “There‘s no way a man like that could kill. Maybe Avayev and his family were killed.”

Twenty-four hours later on April 19, Sergey Protosenya, a former higher-up at Novatek, owned by Gazprom, was found dead at his home in Lloret de Mar, near Barcelona on the Mediterranean. The bodies of wife and daughter were also discovered and “showed signs of having suffered violence.” Catalan police came to the conclusion that it was a double murder-suicide, not a triple homicide. Case closed.

One ‘Suicide’ at a Time

By no means is this a complete list, but let’s stop there and connect some dots. Almost all of these “suicides” involved energy executives with ties to Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. Gazprom upset President Vladimir Putin’s fragile nerves by calling for an end to the war with Ukraine and by urging compassion for the innocent victims of the Russian invasion.

By now I think we know the misfortune that can befall anyone who opposes Putin. They might sip tea laced with radioactive isotope polonium-210 in a London hotel and suffer an agonizing death (Alexander Litvinenko).

They might have the bad luck of running into the nerve agent Novichok on the door handle of their home, again in London (Sergey Skripal and his daughter).

They might be assassinated on a Moscow bridge when, for some odd reason, the security cameras were not working (Boris Nemtsov).

They could poisoned in Siberia with a nerve agent, miraculously surviving, only to be thrown in a Russian prison to rot (Alexei Anatolievich Navalny).

Or one could be gunned down in the elevator of a Moscow apartment building (Anna Politkovskaya).

Welcome to Russia, circa 2022, run by a five-foot-seven dictator who will stop at nothing as he tries to restore the “glory” of the Soviet Union. (Think of five-foot-five Joseph Stalin, but with much better surveillance capabilities.)

While the world watches with collective impotence, any internal opposition to Putin’s megalomania magically disappears, one “suicide” at a time. Let’s hope that sooner than later he will reap the evil that he has sown.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of The Globe Post.
ShareTweet
Stephen J. Lyons

Stephen J. Lyons

Author of six books of reportage and essays, most recently “Searching for Home: Misadventures with Misanthropes” (Finishing Line Press)

Related Posts

A man holds a Romanian national flag during an anti-corruption demonstration in Romania's capital Bucharest.
World

Russia Denies Interfering in Romania Elections

by Staff Writer with AFP
December 5, 2024
Putin talks to Trump in Hamburg
Opinion

From Roosevelt to Trump: The Complicated Legacy of Personal Diplomacy

by Tizoc Chavez
November 15, 2024
Ukraine invasion
World

EU Lawmakers Approve New $38B Loan for Ukraine

by Staff Writer with AFP
October 22, 2024
Workers fix an election campaign billboard of the Socialist Party reading "We vote the star, we vote the socialists. It is logical" in Chisinau on February 13, 2019
World

Moldova Uncovers ‘Unprecedented’ Pro-Russia Vote Rigging

by Staff Writer with AFP
October 3, 2024
An elderly woman pulls a trolley bag past a destroyed building in Bakhmut in Ukraine's Donetsk
World

Russian Strike Kills 51 in Ukrainian City

by Staff Writer with AFP
September 4, 2024
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un
World

Ties With Russia Entering New Era, N. Korea’s Kim Say

by Staff Writer with AFP
June 19, 2024
Next Post
Taliban fighters

UN Expert Decries 'Systematic' Attacks on Afghan Shiites

UK channel migrants

More Migrants Cross Channel So Far This Year Than Whole of 2021

Please login to join discussion

Recommended

People from Nordic countries participate in the 2025 WorldPride DC parade and celebrate LGBTQ rights in Washington DC, USA, Saturday, June 7, 2025.

Sweden Cuts Red Tape for Changing Legal Gender

July 16, 2025
Ursula von der Leyen

EU Ministers Weigh Response to Latest Trump Tariff Threat

July 14, 2025
UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese

UN Says US Sanctions on Expert Sets ‘Dangerous Precedent,’ Must Be Reversed

July 11, 2025
Women in Afghanistan wearing a blue burqa

ICC Seeks Arrest of Taliban Leaders Over Persecution of Women

July 9, 2025
Kenya, Nairobi, 2024-07-16. Protesters in the streets

Nairobi Tense as Kenya Marks Democracy Uprising

July 7, 2025
President Donald Trump

Trump Wins ‘Phenomenal’ Victory as Congress Passes Flagship Bill

July 4, 2025

Opinion

Donald Trump

Fact vs. Fiction: The Trump Administration’s Dubious War on Reverse Discrimination

June 18, 2025
Tens of thousands of protestors shut down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on Saturday, April 5, 2025, protesting the Trump administration's abuse of the separation of federal powers as well as the deep cuts to governmental services overseen by presidential advisor Elon Musk.

Civil Society Is Holding the Line. Will Washington Notice?

June 17, 2025
A Black Lives Matter mural in New York City.

Fuhgeddaboudit! America’s Erasure of History

April 2, 2025
Bust of Deputy Rubens Paiva in the Chamber of Deputies

Democratic Brazilians Are Still Here

March 18, 2025
A woman from Guatemala

Dispatch From Central America

January 28, 2025
US President Donald Trump

Dear Trump Supporters: Is This the America You Wanted?

January 28, 2025
Facebook Twitter

Newsletter

Do you like our reporting?
SUBSCRIBE

About Us

The Globe Post

The Globe Post is part of Globe Post Media, a U.S. digital news organization that is publishing the world's best targeted news sites.

submit oped

© 2018 The Globe Post

No Result
View All Result
  • National
  • World
  • Business
  • Interviews
  • Lifestyle
  • Democracy at Risk
    • Media Freedom
  • Opinion
    • Editorials
    • Columns
    • Book Reviews
    • Stage
  • Submit Op-ed

© 2018 The Globe Post