Six Russian oligarchs have been found dead under suspicious circumstances this year and an expert believe their deaths are the work of Vladimir Putin's Kremlin.
It had been reported that many of the deaths were “murder-suicides” but author John O’Neill told the New York Post that he believes we are now seeing “classic Soviet-era tactics” commonly used by Stalin.
He said that Russia ’s fearsome Unit 29155, that’s part of Russia’s vast military intelligence agency, the GRU, are believed to be behind the staged murder-suicides and poisonings with Putin trying to send a message to people.
Only two weeks ago, two Russian oligarchs were found dead alongside their wives and children, a day apart.
Sergei Protosenya, the former deputy chairman of the natural gas company Novatek, was found hanged in the garden with a bloodstained axe and a knife by his side in his Costa Brava villa.
His wife and 18-year-old daughter were found inside stabbed to death.
However, Mr Protosenya's son Fedor spoke insisting that his dad was not a killer and could never harm his family: “He loved my mother and especially Maria, my sister.
“She was his princess. He could never do anything to harm them. I don’t know what happened that night but I know that my father did not hurt them.”
The next day Vladislav Avayev, the former vice president of Gazprombank, was found dead of a gunshot wound in his Moscow apartment.
Neither of the men were on the international sanctions list and experts believe they were assassinations made to look like domestic violence.
At the start of the year Leonid Shulman, a 60-year-old top executive at Gazprom, was found dead by apparent suicide on January 30.
Just a month after that, another top executive at Gazprom was found dead in the same village.
Alexander Tyulakov was found dead in his garage on February 25 with a suicide note next to his body.
Just three days later on February 28, Mikhail Watford, a gas and oil magnate, was discovered hanged in the garage of his Surrey, England, mansion, leaving behind three children.
Billionaire Vasily Melnikov, was found dead alongside his family in Nizhny Novgorod in late March.
Both Melnikov, his wife and their two sons were found stabbed to death with knives were recovered at the crime scene however Russian authorities concluded Melnikov killed his family before stabbing himself to death.
Anders Aslund, author of Russia’s Crony Capitalism told the New York Post that the deaths of these oligarch “looks like Kremlin murders to me”.
He added that he had learnt that Russian intelligence drew up two lists containing the names of executives in that country’s energy industry, in late 2021 and at the start of March and believed that someone in the industry was leaking information about the invasion of Ukraine.
“The list was presented to Putin by the FSB [the Federal Security Service] and Putin approved the liquidation of everyone on the list without even looking at it.
“Putin finances a lot of his operations through Gazprom and Gazprombank, and the executives who work there know all about this secret financing. The gas sector is the most corrupt sector in Russia.”
