By: Fern Sidman

As the war that Russia launched against neighboring Ukraine is now in its second year, it appears that Russian President Vladimir Putin is using this time to quietly and surreptitiously get rid of those in his close circle that he perceives to be a threat to him.  According to a recent article that appeared in the New York Post, 39 people connected with Russia and/or Putin have died under highly suspicious manners.

In March of this year alone, two former Russian honchos passed away. The Post reported that Sergey Grishin, a financial fraudster and oligarch who sold Prince Harry and wife Meghan their Montecito, California, mansion for $14.7 million, perished from sepsis on March 6.

The Post reported that this mysterious death happened after Grishin criticized Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Virologist Andrey Botikov — who helped develop the controversial Sputnik V Covid vaccine — went in a less subtle manner on March 1: He fell victim to a belt around his neck, the Post reported.

Energy bosses, politicians and outspoken critics are among those who have paid the ultimate price.

In January of this year, the Jewish Voice reported that Indian police said that they found the body of a Russian man on a ship anchored at a port in eastern Odisha, a week after two Russian tourists mysteriously died in the state, as was reported on January 3 on the National News web site.

Milyakov Sergey, 51, was a chief engineer of the ship MV Aldanah, which was on its way to Mumbai from Chittagong in Bangladesh. The report indicated that his body was found in the vessel at Paradip Port in Odisha in January.

Senior police officer Manoranjan Chaudhary told The National there were 21 crew members on board the vessel.

Chaudhary said no formal report was registered as the shipping company, captain or other members had yet to file a case, according to the report on The National web site.

One of Vladimir Putin’s top space engineers passed away unexpectedly at age 74, as was reported on December 30th, making him the latest member of Russia’s scientific and military elite to die under suspicious circumstances in 2022.

Vladimir Nesterov was the man who created the Russian Angara rocket and was the former general director of the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center. The Russian state news agency Tass reported Nesterov’s death, citing information confirmed by the Khrunichev Center’s press service, according to a New York Post report.   Nesterov’s cause and manner of death have not been disclosed.

Also in January, it was reported by the Jewish Voice that a Russian politician and sausage magnate who criticized Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine had been found dead following a mysterious fall from a third floor window at a hotel in Rayagada in Odisha in India,  as was reported by Yahoo News.

Pavel Antov, who was the country’s highest-earning elected politician, had been vacationing in India ahead of his 66th birthday when his body was discovered, according to a Yahoo News report.  He was rushed to a local hospital by his Indian guide but declared dead by a doctor.

His death comes just six months after he described Russia’s air strikes on Kyiv as “terror” while pointing to a latest attack, Yahoo News reported.

“A girl has been pulled out from under the rubble, the girl’s father appears to have died,” he said at the time. “The mother is trying to be pulled out with a crane. She is trapped under a slab. To tell the truth, it is extremely difficult to call this anything other than terror,” Antov added.

Yahoo News reported that soon after making these comments, Antov withdrew them and offered an apology. The report indicated that he said that there had been an “unfortunate misunderstanding” and that he had “always supported the President.”

His death came just weeks after Ravi Maganov, the chairman of the board of Russia’s largest private oil company, reportedly fell from a sixth story hospital window, Yahoo News reported. The company had previously called for an end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Speaking to the Post, Jon O’Neill co-author of “The Dancer and the Devil: Stalin, Pavlova and the Road to the Great Pandemic,” said that Russia has “their fingerprints on at least some of the deaths that range from the mysterious to the gruesome to the seemingly accidental.”

He added that  “Putin does not want to murder people directly. If he does, he gets exposed all over the world. He wants people appearing to kill themselves or seeming to die from unusual diseases. Putin wants to kill people on a deniable basis. At the same time, everyone in Russia knows that these people are being murdered. It sends a message to those associated with Putin: You better stay in line.”

O’Neill also told the Post: “It can’t be a mistake Putin made. It has to be bad execution. Those people know too much about what really happened. That is why they are dying.”

Speaking to the UK’s Sun Online, Professor Anthony Glees, an intelligence expert from the University of Buckingham, said,  “Russia under Putin has become a state where political opponents can and will be killed,” the Post reported. He added that, “Russia under Putin is a mafia state, a network of vile criminals who believe that if they don’t hang together, they will ultimately hang separately. Death is always there to remind Putin’s cronies of their duties.”