A senior defense official in Russia has been found dead after falling from the 16th floor of an apartment building – another mysterious death of a senior official, the Daily Mail reports.
58-year-old Marina Yankina was discovered by a passer-by at the entrance to a house on Zamshina Street in St. Petersburg. It is believed that she fell from a height of 160 meters, after which she died.
She was a key figure in financing Vladimir Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine.
Yankina was the head of the Ministry of Defense’s financial support department for the Western Military District, which was closely linked to the invasion.
She is the latest of many Russians to die during Putin’s long rule. Last week, Major General Vladimir Makarov – a Russian general who was recently fired by Putin – was found dead in a suspected suicide.
Before joining the Western Military District, Yankina worked in the Federal Tax Service, and was also the deputy chairman of the Committee on Property Relations of St. Petersburg.
She is believed to have been at the center of efforts to increase funding for the war launched by Putin almost a year ago, which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of casualties and a series of military disasters for Putin. She maintained friendly relations with senior officials in the Leningrad region, near St. Petersburg, Putin’s birthplace.
Yankina is not the first death of a high-ranking Russian, as dozens of Russian businessmen have been found dead under unexplained circumstances since the beginning of 2022. Many of them were officially declared suicides. From December 24 to 26, there was a series of four mysterious deaths. On December 26, Pavel Antonov – the richest deputy of the Russian Duma (the Russian parliament) and a critic of Putin – died in India, falling from a hotel window. His companion, Vladimir Bidenov, was found dead in the same hotel four days earlier. Alexei Maslov, 69, a former head of Russia’s ground forces, died in hospital on December 25, and Alexander Buzakov, who for a decade was head of Russia’s “admiralty shipyards”, died on December 24. In July, Yevgeny Lobachev, 76, a retired major general of the Russian Federation’s Federal Security Service, was found dead in Moscow. His death was also ruled a suicide. Other recent deaths include the editor of a popular Russian propaganda magazine, the vice president of Gazprombank and a senior Gazprom official.
Suspicious deaths of prominent Russians are not limited to Russia’s borders. In April, Sergey Protosenya – former vice-president of Novatek – was found hanging from a railing. His wife and daughter were found dead with stab wounds. Businessman Mikhail Watford was found dead at his home in Surrey, England, and another – Vladimir Bidenov – died in France after hitting his head on a railing.
