Putin Says Last Oligarch’s Death “Really Was Accidental”

Vladimir Putin has lodged a complaint about the BBC’s coverage of the death of one of his closest allies, Ivan Pechorin, who recently drowned after falling into the sea from a boat off Russia’s Pacific coast. Pechorin was the top manager of Russia’s Far East and Arctic Development Corporation.

A Kremlin statement said “the corporation’s coverage consisted of speculation and rumour that we’ve already denied and anyway, prove it?”

Pechorin is the 12th public figure linked to the Kremlin to die in mysterious circumstances, since the war began. His predecessor died from “a stroke” shortly after taking over the job, earlier this year. While that may seem relatively normal, oligarchs opposed to Putin tend to meet surprisingly consistent ends.

They include a man who fell to his death from a sixth floor hospital window, a man who was found dead in his swimming pool with gunshot wounds to the head, a man found on his bathroom floor in a pool of blood with multiple stab wounds, a man found dead from a heart attack suspected to have been triggered by poison, a man who took his own life after killing his wife and daughter, another man who took his own life after killing his wife and daughter, a man and his wife found stabbed to death at home, a man found hanging in his own garage, another man found hanging in his home in Spain, a man found dead alongside his wife and two young sons and a husband and wife found dead with multiple stab wounds.

President Putin himself has said that “People fall eento freezink water and drown all the time. I warn heem myself thees weel happen but he is not leeseneenk!”