RUSSIAN ROULETTE: Putin’s energy billionaires mysteriously dying

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There used to be a joke about The Grateful Dead to signify a short, precarious lifespan.

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After the beloved San Francisco band lost a slew of piano players who died over the years, the joke was “that’s like being a piano player in The Grateful Dead.”

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Russian energy executives may be feeling that way. As President Vladimir Putin’s unpopular, costly and deadly war on Ukraine drags on, these industrial oligarchs have been dying in droves.

Some of the explanations have the ludicrous feel of a Red Guards rally or a university teach-in.

HERE ARE SOME OF THE DEAD

RAVIL MAGANOV

WHO? Chairman of energy giant Lukoil.

411: Maganov, 67, a high-flying energy executive died on Sept. 1 under, er, mysterious circumstances. Sources told Reuters he died after falling eight floors out of a Moscow hospital window, the official story was “long illness.” Maganov and his company had criticized the war in Ukraine.

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LEONID SHULMAN

WHO? Executive at Gazprom

411: Found dead in late January in the bathroom of his cottage. No cause of death was cited.

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ALEXANDER TYULAKOV

WHO: Gazprom executive

411: On Feb. 25, Tyulakov was found dead in his garage in the same village where Shulman died. Officials said there was a note found near his body.

MIKHAIL WATFORD

WHO? Energy billionaire

411: Watford was discovered hanging in the garage of his country estate in England three days after Tyulakov was found dead. Officials said that, yes, his death was “unexplained” but not, uh, suspicious.

VLADISLAV AVAYEV

WHO? Vice president for Gazprombank

411: Avayev was discovered dead in his Moscow apartment in April alongside his wife and daughter, who were also dead. Officials claimed it was a murder-suicide. The bank is closer-than-this to the giant energy sector.

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SERGEI PROTOSENYA

WHO? Deputy Chair of Novatek

411: Protosenya was found dead with his wife and daughter at their holiday villa in Spain on April 19. Cops theorized it was another murder-suicide. But his son took a different view of the former executive of Russia’s largest liquefied natural gas producer. He said it was murder.

ALEXANDER SUBBOTIN

WHO? Lukoil executive

411: Subbotin — a billionaire — was discovered in the basement of a country house near Moscow in May. The room where Subbotin died was … wait for it … allegedly used for “Jamaican voodoo rituals,” Russian state media outlet TASS reported, citing local cops.

YURI VORONOV

WHO? Shipping mogul

411: Voronov’s shipping company had close ties to Gazprom’s Arctic operations. He was found dead in July of a gunshot wound in the swimming pool at his mansion in Leninsky. It’s a small, elite gated community outside St. Petersburg. It’s also the same place where Shulman and Tyulakov died.

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