Another close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin has died in mysterious circumstances after allegedly suffocating while on a business trip in the village of Roshchino in Russia’s east.
Vladimir Nikolayevich Sungorkin, 68, was the editor-in-chief of the pro-government Komsomolskaya Pravda, a Russian state newspaper.
Sungorkin died “suddenly,” according to the newspaper, after showing signs of “suffocation” during the trip on Wednesday.
“It happened absolutely suddenly, nothing foreshadowed. We were in the village of Roshchino. We were driving, we were already making our way towards Khabarovsk, we planned to get there in the evening today, and from there to Moscow. All was good,” his colleague Leonid Zakharov, who had accompanied him on the business trip, wrote.
According to Zakharov, Sungorkin fell unconscious minutes after suggesting their group “find a beautiful place somewhere… for lunch.
“Three minutes later, Vladimir began to suffocate. We took him out for fresh air, he was already unconscious… Nothing helped. The doctor who did the initial examination said that apparently, it was a stroke. But this is the initial conclusion,” Zakharov wrote.
In an obituary for Sungorkin, the staff of Komsomolskaya Pravda wrote that the journalist had come from humble beginnings before building the newspaper up into “a mighty empire,” referring to him as “a symbol of the new national journalism.”
Sungorkin’s death is coming amid a string of mysterious deaths of top Putin allies this month.
Most recently, Ivan Pechorin, a former aviation director for Russia’s Far East and Arctic Development Corporation, was reported dead after allegedly “falling from a boat” in Vladivostok, according to local Russian media outlets.