A top Russian oil executive has been found dead beneath the windows of his Moscow home in what authorities said was an apparent suicide, state media report.
Andrei Badalov, 62, had been vice president of the state-owned oil pipeline company Transneft since 2021.
His body was found beside a house along the Rublevskoye Highway after an apparent fall from a window, TASS reported. Police told TASS that Badalov had left a suicide note.
Badalov is the latest in a long line of high-profile and wealthy Russians to die in recent years, many after apparent falls from windows or suffering what authorities described as accidents. Others have been murdered.
The deaths come amid Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s war on Ukraine, which has seen his country’s oil sector hit hard with Western sanctions.
Transneft confirmed Badalov’s death and said it came during a “difficult and stressful period” marked by Western sanctions, The Moscow Times newspaper reported.
Main, Russian President Vladimir Putin reacts during the New Ideas For New Times Forum at the Russia National Center, July 3, 2025, in Moscow, Russia. Inset, Transneft Vice President Andrei Badalov.
Main, Russian President Vladimir Putin reacts during the New Ideas For New Times Forum at the Russia National Center, July 3, 2025, in Moscow, Russia. Inset, Transneft Vice President Andrei Badalov.
Contributor/Getty Images
Earlier High-Profile Russia Deaths
In April 2022, former Kremlin official and Gazprombank vice-president Vladislav Avayev, 51, was found dead in his luxury Moscow apartment alongside the bodies of his wife and 13-year-old daughter. It appeared he had shot them before turning the gun on himself.
The following day, former Novatek deputy chairman Sergey Protosenya, 55, his wife Natalya, 53, and 18-year-old daughter, Maria, were found dead at their Spanish mansion.
The scene suggested the women had been stabbed, before Protosenya hanged himself in the garden.
Four months later, Ravil Maganov, chairman of Lukoil, Russia’s second-largest oil company, died after a fall from a Moscow hospital window. Lukoil’s official statement said he was suffering from a “serious illness”.
Ivan Pechorin, a top Far East development official, drowned near Vladivostok under similarly unclear circumstances in 2022.
And in December of the same year, Pavel Antov, a Russian politician who had criticized Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, was found dead after a fall from a window in India.
Antov, who was a member of Putin’s United Russia party and a wealthy sausage tycoon, was found lying in a pool of blood outside the Hotel Sai International in the district of Rayagada, which is in the state of Odisha.
The death of Russian military blogger Andrei Morozov in 2024 also drew international attention.
Morozov, known by his online alias Murz, stated in his final post that he planned to take his own life to shield fellow soldiers from repercussions after he reported on substantial Russian military losses in the Ukraine conflict.
His suicide note and social media posts described increasing pressure from Russian authorities and public condemnation from state media.