Andrei Badalov, vice president of Russian state monopoly Transneft, has died after falling from the window of his home in the elite Moscow suburb of Rublyovka, The Moskow Times reported.

Transneft confirmed that Badalov died at the age of 62, but did not comment on the circumstances. The company said his work was during a "difficult and tense period" marked by Western sanctions.

Badalov's body was found under the windows of a house on the Rublyovo-Uspenskoye highway, state news agency TASS reported, citing an unnamed law enforcement source.

"The preliminary version of the death is suicide," the source said, adding that a preliminary investigation was under way.

Badalov had overseen Transneft's digital transformation since his appointment as vice president in July 2021.

His death is the latest in a string of high-profile and unexplained deaths among senior executives in Russia's energy sector since the country launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. 

At least four deaths in 2022 have been linked to state-owned energy giant Gazprom, while others involve executives from Novatek and Lukoil.

In 2022. Ravil Maganov, chairman of Lukoil, Russia's second-largest oil company, died in a fall from a sixth-floor window at Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital, also known as the Kremlin Clinic.

The same morning, Vladimir Putin, who had earlier honored the 67-year-old Maganov with a top award, visited the hospital to pay his last respects to Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader to die that week.

In 2023, top military official Marina Yankina, 58, head of the financial support department of the Russian Defense Ministry's Western Military District, was found dead after falling from a 16th-floor window in St. Petersburg.

The circumstances surrounding her death remain unclear.

Former oil company vice president Mikhail Rogachev, 64, died after falling from his tenth-floor apartment in Moscow in October 2024.

He was a senior executive at Yukos, the oil company dismembered by Putin and his cronies. | BGNES