It has been just a month since Vladimir Makarov was relieved of his post as deputy head of Russia’s Interior Ministry’s Counter-Extremism Directorate, the body tasked with combating dissent against President Vladimir Putin. The former official was found dead at his home on Monday: he took his own life, state news agency Tass wrote in a new episode to add to the wake of oligarchs or former Russian leaders mysteriously killed in quickly liquidated cases came to life. suicides”.
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Makarov, 72, «was found in the village of Golikovo near Moscow. Law enforcement officials said he committed suicide,” the news agency reported, explaining that “the incident” occurred on the morning of February 13, recalling that the major general “resigned from his post as deputy head of the… Directorate for Combating Extremism was dismissed.” A term we use in Moscow to mean opposition groups – such as the foundation of imprisoned dissident Alexei Navalny – or media critical of the Kremlin. Makarov “has been described in the past as the main organizer of the hunt for opposition figures and troublesome journalists” and “helped oversee Russia’s repression,” writes the Moscow Times.
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According to sources on the Telegram channel Baza, which is credited with ties to Russian security services, Makarov reportedly shot himself with a gas-operated shotgun after a period of depression after torpedoing in the presence of his wife. Makarov is just the latest senior security figure to die by apparent suicide in recent months: last summer, retired FSB Major General Yevgeny Lobachev and Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Major General Lev Sotskov died in two cases treated as suicides. And the line of mysterious deaths involving Russian leaders, officials and oligarchs since the invasion of Ukraine began is long. Cases that are often mysterious, including apparent homicides, accidents, or suspicious falls. As in the case of Pavel Antov, the deputy for the tsarist United Russia party, who flew down three floors from a hotel in India last December after explicitly criticizing the war and then offering a “sincere” apology. Earlier, the creative director of the Russian company Agima, Grigory Porzellanov, fell from a balcony during a police search, this time of his house in Nizhny Novgorod. Porzellanov had never made a secret of his opposition to the war. Ravil Maganov, CEO of Lukoil, fell from a window of a Moscow clinic on September 1. Also unclear was the disappearance of tycoon Alexander Tyulakov, deputy general director of Gazprom, who was found dead in the garage of his home on February 25 on suspicion of suicide. Just a day after the invasion.