Meat millionaire Pavel Antov, who recently denied criticizing the war in Ukraine, had just turned 65.
Russian sausage tycoon Pavel Antov has been found dead in an Indian hotel two days after a friend of his died on the same trip.
The two were visiting the eastern Indian state of Odisha and the millionaire, who was also a politician, had just celebrated his birthday at the hotel.
Antov was a well-known figure in the city of Vladimir, east of Moscow.
Last summer, he denied criticizing Russia’s war in Ukraine after a message appeared on his WhatsApp account.
The millionaire’s death is the latest in a string of unexplained deaths involving Russian tycoons since the start of the Russian invasion, many of whom have been vocal critics of the war.
According to Russian media reports, Antov, 65, fell from a hotel window in the town of Rayagada on Sunday. His friend, Vladimir Budanov, died at the hotel on Friday.
Odisha Police Superintendent Vivekananda Sharma said Budanov had suffered a stroke and that his friend “was depressed after his death and that’s why he died too.”
Russian consul in Calcutta Alexei Idamkin told Tass news agency that Indian police did not see a “criminal element in these tragic events”.
Tour guide Jitendra Singh told reporters that Budanov may have “consumed too much alcohol because he had bottles of liquor”.
Pavel Antov founded the Vladimir Standard meat processing plant, and in 2019, Forbes magazine estimated his fortune at around $140 million (roughly R$730 million) topping the list of richest lawmakers and civil servants in Russia.
He played an important role in the Vladimir legislative assembly, heading a committee on land policy and ecology. Assembly Deputy Speaker Vyacheslav Kartukhin said he died in “tragic circumstances”.
Late last June, Pavel Antov appeared to retaliate against a Russian rocket attack on a residential block in Kiev’s Shevchenkivskyi district, which killed a man and injured his seven-year-old daughter and mother.
A WhatsApp message on Antov’s account described how the family was pulled from the rubble: “It’s extremely difficult to call all this anything other than terror.”
The message was deleted and Antov posted on social media that he was a supporter of President Putin, a “patriot of my country” and said he supported the war.
He insisted that the WhatsApp message “came from someone whose opinion on the special military operation in Ukraine strongly disagreed.” He added that the message had been accidentally posted on his messenger and it was a very annoying misunderstanding.
Other famous Russian tycoons have died under mysterious circumstances since the war began.
In September, the head of Russian oil giant Lukoil, Ravil Maganov, reportedly fell from a window in a Moscow hospital.
– This text was published in https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/internacional-64103693
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Source: Terra
Camila Luna is a writer at Gossipify, where she covers the latest movies and television series. With a passion for all things entertainment, Camila brings her unique perspective to her writing and offers readers an inside look at the industry. Camila is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in English and is also a avid movie watcher.
