Russian energy boss who criticised Ukraine war dies after falling from sixth-floor window

The chairman of Lukoil, one of Russia’s largest oil companies and one of the only Russian businesses to criticise Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, has fallen from a sixth-floor window at a hospital in Moscow.

State-linked Russian media were quick to declare the death of Ravil Maganov as a suicide, but there are reportedly no CCTV cameras around the area of the Central Clinical Hospital in question because of renovations.

Media reports said Mr Maganov had been receiving treatment for a heart condition at the hospital and had also complained of being depressed.

The hospital, in the centre of the Moscow, treats many high-profile patients and was where Mikhail Gorbachev, who ruled the Soviet Union from 1985 until its breakup in 1991, died earlier this week. Security is usually tight.

Company called Ukraine invasion ‘tragic’

In a statement, Lukoil said that its “many thousands of employees mourn deeply for this grievous loss and express their sincere condolences to Ravil Maganov’s family”.

In March, the company described the invasion of Ukraine as “tragic” and called for the “earliest end to the armed conflict”.

Mr Maganov had worked for Lukoil since the early 1990s and had been considered a Kremlin loyalist. He is the latest of several Russian businessmen to die in mysterious circumstances since the start of the war in Ukraine in February, and by far the most senior.

In May, a former senior manager at Lukoil, Alexander Subbotin, also died under unusual circumstances.

Moscow has been increasingly tense in recent days. Until only a month or so ago, the war in Ukraine felt a long way off – but the assassination of pro-Kremlin journalist Darya Dugina last month, an arson attack on a senior military commander’s car last week and the start of an army recruitment campaign have changed the mood.