Bhubaneshwar/Hyderabad: The death of Russian lawmaker and oligarch Pavel Antov, a known Putin critic, from falling from a hotel in Odisha on December 25 has deepened the mystery and questions are being asked whether it was suicide or a hit job. Antov died three days after one of his co-travellers Vladimir Bidenov (61) complained of ill health at the same hotel and was declared dead in hospital.
A multi-millionaire, Antov was on vacation in the Rayagada region of Odisha where he was celebrating his 66th birthday. According to the police, he was allegedly found dead after falling out of a third-floor hotel window. Both Antov and Bidenov were travelling with couple-friends Mikhail Turov and Natalia Panasenko.
They had reached Daringibadi, a hill station in Kandhamal district on December 21 before heading to Rayagada, the district that attracts tourists for its tribal communities. The group checked into Sai International Hotel in Rayagada town. While the couple booked a separate room, Bidenov and Antov stayed together.
The next morning, Bidenov fell sick and was rushed to the Rayagada district headquarters hospital where he was declared dead. Police informed the Russian Embassy in New Delhi about the incident. It was not possible for Bidenov's family members to reach Rayagada, therefore, police performed the last rites of the Russian at the local cremation ground on Saturday.
Visibly shaken by his co-traveller's death, Antov allegedly died by suicide after jumping from the hotel window. Confirming the news, Vyacheslav Kartukhin, Vice Speaker of the Regional Parliament on the Telegram channel said, "Our colleague, a successful entrepreneur, and philanthropist Pavel Antov passed away. On behalf of the deputies of the United Russia faction, I express my deep condolences to relatives and friends," ANI wrote quoting Russian News Agency, TASS.
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Antov, as per reports, was a critic of Russia's war against Ukraine and had issued a statement in this regard earlier this year. Reports said he had retracted his statement shortly afterward.
"Four people came to stay in a hotel in Rayagada on December 21. On December 22 morning, one of them ( Vladimir Bidenov) died. After post-mortem, it was found that he suffered a heart stroke. He was cremated. His friend, (Pavel Antonov) was depressed after his death and he too died on December 25," SP Rayagada, Vivekananda Sharma said.
Who was Pavel Antov
Pavel Antov was the founder of Vladimir Standard, a meat processing plant. In 2019, Forbes estimated his fortune at some $140m as his name was counted among the richest Russian lawmakers.
In June 2022, Antov had allegedly criticised Russia's missile attack on a residential block in the Shevchenkivskyi district of Kyiv that left a man dead and his seven-year-old daughter and her mother wounded. Reports said that a WhatsApp message on Antov's account read: "It's extremely difficult to call all this anything but terror."
The message was deleted and Antov posted on social media that he was a supporter of President Vladimir Putin and backed the war. He claimed that the WhatsApp message had come from "someone whose opinion on the special military operation in Ukraine he strongly disagreed with and was posted accidentally on his messenger".
List of Russian influential men dying under mysterious circumstances in 2022
Several high-profile Russians have died in mysterious circumstances since the war began.
- On January 30, Leonid Shulman, (60), head of the transport department at Gazprom Invest was found with his wrists slit in a pool in the village of Leninskoye.
- On February 8, Igor Nosov, head of the Corporation for the Development of the Far East and the Arctic died at the age of 43. The death was officially announced as caused by a stroke.
- On February 28, Mikhail Watford, the Ukraine-born oligarch was found dead at his home in unexplained circumstances.
- On April 19, Sergei Protosenya, (55) his wife, and his daughter were found dead in a rented villa in Spain. The former top manager at Russian gas giant Novatek was found hanged, while his wife and daughter had been stabbed to death in a villa in the town of Lloret de Mar near Barcelona.
- On July 4, Yuri Voronov, 61, who headed Astra Shipping, a transportation company that has worked with Gazprom on its Arctic projects, was found dead. His body was discovered in the swimming pool of a luxury property near St Petersburg.
- On September 1, Ravil Maganov, 67, the chairman of Russia's Lukoil oil giant, died after falling from a hospital window in Moscow.
- On September 14, Vladimir Nikolayevich Sungorkin, 68, Editor-in-chief of Russian state newspaper Pravda died of 'stroke' during a business trip.
- On December 24, Alexander Buzakov, director general of Admiralty Shipyards, a major Russian shipyard that specialises in building non-nuclear submarines, died in mysterious circumstances.
