Just two days after Mikhail Gorbachev passed away at the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow, Russian oil magnate Ravil Maganov has fallen to his death from the sixth-floor window of the same hospital.

Tass, Russia’s state-owned news agency, quoted sources saying that Maganov had fallen out of the window early on Thursday morning, adding later that he had taken his own life. 

The 67 year-old Maganov was the chairman of Russia’s largest private oil company, LUKoil. In March, the oil company released a statement on the war in Ukraine; it called for “the soonest termination of the armed conflict” and expressed “sincere empathy for all victims”. 

Maganov is not the first person from LUKoil to die in strange circumstances this year. In April, Alexander Subbotin, the former oil executive, was found dead at the house of a shaman in Mytishchi, a city close to Moscow. A state-owned news agency said he suffered from a heart attack. 

And there have been others. There is even a Wikipedia page entitled â€ś2022 Russian mystery deaths” which lists the names of businessmen who’ve died in unusual circumstances this year. Maganov’s name brings the total to ten.

Also this week, the liberal politician Leonid Gozman was arrested for a 2020 Facebook post in which he wrote: “Hitler was an absolute evil, but Stalin was even worse.” Last year it was made illegal in Russia to equate the actions of the USSR with Nazi Germany. Remember, Putin has labelled the break-up of the Soviet Union the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”. And it seems he interprets condemnation of Stalin as an indirect criticism of himself. 

As for Ravil Maganov, investigating authorities say they are working at the scene to establish how he died. That may take some time.