Russia‘s ‘highest-earning elected politician’ who had criticised Vladimir Putin‘s war in Ukraine has been found dead after a mysterious fall from a hotel in India.
Sausage multi-millionaire Pavel Antov, from the main pro-Putin party United Russia, had been on a trip to celebrate his upcoming 66th birthday.
A male friend in his party had died ‘from a heart attack’ on Thursday last week, and the wealthy politician perished two days later.
The married tycoon, an MP in the legislative assembly of the Vladimir region, was listed as Russia’s highest-earning elected official in 2019.
The Russian Consul General in Kolkata Alexei Idamkin told TASS he ‘fell’ out of a hotel window in Rayagada, Odisha state.
‘We are closely following the investigation and receiving all the information from the Odisha police,’ the diplomat said.
In June, Antov criticised the war and air strikes on Kyiv as Russian ‘terror’ wounding Ukrainian civilians.
He highlighted a Russian missile strike and said: ‘A girl has been pulled out from under the rubble, the girl’s father appears to have died.
‘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.’
He evidently then swiftly came under intense pressure after which he withdrew the comment and made a grovelling apology.
He made an about-turn and claimed his post on social media had been ‘an unfortunate misunderstanding’ and a ‘technical error’.
He insisted he had ‘always supported the president’ and ‘sincerely’ backed the goals of Putin’s military operation – but local journalists strongly disputed this.
Hellbound and Down 