Lukoil: third top executive dies suddenly at company that criticised Putin's war

The chairman of one of Russia's biggest oil companies, Lukoil, has died suddenly, becoming the third of its senior executives to die unexpectedly in the past 18 months.

Vladimir Nekrasov died, aged 66, on Tuesday after suffering "acute heart failure", according to a Lukoil statement. He had "worked for almost 50 years" in oil and gas and held two other positions previously at the company, said CNN.

The death of his predecessor, Ravil Maganov, in September 2022 after falling out of a hospital window, "raised eyebrows among Russia watchers in the West" and sparked suspicions that the company's executives were being targeted for making public statements against Russia's invasion of Ukraine, said The Independent. A statement from Lukoil said Maganov had "passed away following a severe illness" but did not mention the fall.

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Prior to Maganov's death, another "former top manager" at Lukoil, Alexander Subbotin, died shortly after the start of the war in May 2022, aged 43, after allegedly "consuming toad poison while visiting a shaman".

Lukoil is Russia's second-largest oil company and "produces more than 2% of the world's crude oil", said CNN. It was one of the "few Russian companies to take a public stand" against the Kremlin's decision to invade Ukraine, calling for a "lasting ceasefire".

But it is "not just the oil business" in Russia that has seen executives meet "uncomfortable or unexpected ends" since the invasion, said Newsweek. An executive from Novatek and another from Gazprombank both died in suspicious circumstances in the spring of 2022, while sausage executive Pavel Antov was found dead after an alleged fall from a hotel window in India just "months after he denied criticising Russia's war" in a WhatsApp message, the Independent said.

The paper added that "some estimates" have said 39 "high-profile" Russians have died since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.