“Found head” corpse. The 19th Director of Dead Top under suspicious conditions in Russia since the beginning of the war
Alexey Sinitsyn, the general manager of the K-Potash Service potassium producer, was found dead near Kaliningrad, thus becoming the 19th director of a top Russian company that dies in mysterious circumstances since the beginning of Russia's war against Ukraine, writes the independent publication The Moscow Times (MT).
Since 2022, at least 19 executive directors and businessmen, many of them having connections with Russian giants in the field of oil and gas, including Lukoil, Gazprom and Transneoft, have died in suspicious circumstances in Russia and abroad.
Sinitsyn's body was “found without head”, a source of law enforcement told the Russian Agency.
According to this source, the decapitated body was lying under a bridge, with a towing rope.
Alexey Sinitsyn had taken over the management of K-Potash Service in October 2022. The company operates a potassium mine in the village of Nenskoye in the Kaliningrad region. Mina had to start working in 2021, but the production launch was postponed due to the protests of the inhabitants in the area.
Long list of suspicious deaths
Since the beginning of the large -scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, a number of deaths have been reported in unclear or unusual circumstances, not only within the business environment, but also among law enforcement and government officials.
Last month, Dmitry Osipov, the president of the Uralkali Board of Directors, one of the largest potassium producers in Russia, and Mikhail Kenin, the founder and majority shareholder of the Top Samolet real estate developer, were both found dead. Causes of deaths have not been revealed.
In January 2022, Leonid Shulman, 60 years old, the head of the Gazprom Invest transport service, was found dead in a village in the Leningrad region. A month later, Vladislav Avaev's bodies, former vice-president of Gazprombank, as well as his wife and daughter, were found in an apartment in Moscow.
In July 2022, Yuri Voronov's body, 61 years old, the general director of the transport company Astra Shipping, who worked on Gazprom contracts in Arctica, was found in the Morskie Terrasy holiday village near the Gulf of Finland. He died after a shot in his head.
In the autumn of 2022, the president of the Lukoil Board of Directors, Ravil Maganov, 67, fell from the window of the Central Clinical Hospital of the Department of Administration of Presidential Properties in Moscow. His replacement, Vladimir Nekrasov, 66, died a year later due to “acute heart failure.” In March 2024, Vice President Lukoil, Vitaly Robertus, died at the age of 53. The company did not reveal the causes and circumstances of the death of this top director.
In February 2023, Vyacheslav Rovneyko, co-owner of the Belgian company for marketing NAFTA (B) NV and general manager of Interregional Fuel Union, was found dead in a house on the Rublevo-Uspenskoe highway, near Moscow.
In October 2024, Mikhail Rogachev, former deputy director of Norilsk Nickel, fell from the window of his apartment in Moscow. In July 2025, Andrey Badalov, Vice -President of Transneoft, fell from the 17th floor of a building on the Rublevskoye Highway.
Sergei Protosenya, former leading director of Novatek, was found deadly shot in a villa in Spain. And Alexander Tyulyakova, top director of the Gazprom Financial Division, was found dead in the garage of a house near St. Petersburg.
Pavel Pchelnikov, communication director of Digital Logistics (Russian railways), was found with suicide signs on the balcony of an apartment in Moscow. Pavel Antov, the founder of Vladimirsky Standard, fell from the window of a hotel in India. Ivan Pechorin, director of Far East and Arctic Development Corporation fell from a boat during a walk near the island of Russky.
Kristina Baykova, vice president of Loko-Bank, fell from the window after a party. Igor Shkurko, the first deputy of Yakutskenergo, was found dead in a preventive detention center in Yakutsk, writes MT.
Also, the counter-information officer of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), Vladimir Feshchenko, was found dead in a building of the Moscow Ministry of Defense this year, notes The Kyiv Independent.
Feshchenko's death seems to highlight the increasing internal tensions within the Russian security and military institutions, against the background of the Ukraine.
