September 2022 – Ravil Maganov’s fatal fall from the hospital window
Ravil Maganov, chairman of the Russian oil company Lukoil, died after falling from a window on the sixth floor of a Moscow hospital. Police suspect that he committed suicide, adding that he was also diagnosed with depression apart from heart problems. Lukoil was the first major Russian company to call for an end to the war in Ukraine.
August 2020 – Alexey Navalny’s poisoned underwear
Alexey Navalny, one of Putin’s most staunch critics, fainted on a domestic flight from Tomsk to Moscow and lapsed into a coma. After the plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, Siberia, Navalny received immediate medical treatment.
He was then transferred to the Charite hospital in the German capital, Berlin, where he was found to have been poisoned with Novichok, a chemical nerve agent developed in the Soviet Union.
After recovering, Navalny released a recording of a phone conversation in which a suspected agent of Russia’s domestic intelligence service FSB confessed to the attack. In the recording, which was uploaded to YouTube, the man said the poison was planted inside Navalny’s underwear. Russia dismissed the recorded conversation as fake.