Russian official dies at 5-star hotel after 'falling from high floor' after quitting job

A Russian official - who was in the "same team" as Vladimir Putin's transport minister, Roman Starovoit, 53, who mysteriously died in similar circumstances after he was fired by the Russian President in July - has died after allegedly "falling from a high floor" at a five-star hotel in Moscow. The body of former St Petersburg transport boss Alexander Fedotov, 49, was found outside the Skypoint Luxe hotel at Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport.

He had been staying on a business trip in a room on a "high floor" in the hotel, according to reports. A criminal investigation is underway, with reports saying no suicide note was found. Mr Fedotov had suddenly quit as transport chief for St Petersburg last year amid reports of a probe by the FSB, Russia's feared counterintelligence service. He was linked to Mr Starovoit, whose death - officially designated as suicide hours after Putin fired him - remains highly suspicious, with claims he had been "tortured" before being "murdered". "Both deceased were members of the same team," reported channel VChK-OGPU, with links to law enforcement, on Thursday (September 25). The channel said another official, close to both men, had gone missing.

Mr Fedotov's death comes just a day after the body of a multi-millionaire former customs chief was found in a toilet after fleeing a court case. Boris Avakyan, 43, was discovered with "slit wrists" in the toilet of the Armenian consulate in St Petersburg after he had fled a Russian court where he was implicated in a £37 million fraud trial over customs duties.

Last week, a top Russian executive from a military-linked chemical composites plant was found dead from a gunshot wound. Alexander Tyunin, 50, headed a pioneering company with close links to Putin's war machine.

There have been repeated claims that at least some previous "suicides" in fact have been contract killings, perhaps linked to business feuds.

In February, the death of former police colonel Artur Pryakhin, head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service in the Republic of Karelia, was also noted as a "suicide" by Russian authorities, becoming one of an estimated 17 Russian officials, politicians, businessmen and leading figures in the arts whose deaths followed similar falls from high windows in just 30 months.

Vladimir Putin has been ruthless in dealing with his political opponents at home. He has also publicly warned that anyone who dares to betray the motherland by spying for the West will be hunted down wherever they may be, at home or abroad, and face elimination.

In November 2006, Alexander Litvinenko, a naturalised British defector, ex-member of Moscow's federal security service (FSB) and fierce critic in exile of the Kremlin, was notoriously poisoned in London with radioactive polonium-210 and died in hospital of heart failure. Two former Russian intelligence agents had tea with Litvinenko at a hotel in London when he ingested the poison, Met Police detectives discovered.

Then, in March 2018 Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer who was a double agent for MI6 during the 1990s and early 2000s was poisoned with Novichok nerve agent. The deadly agent had been smeared onto the handle of his front door in Salisbury. His daughter, Yulia, was also poisoned, but both survived.