A Russian executive tasked with helping to oversee development in the country’s Far East died in a bizarre fall from a moving boat just days after attending an economic forum with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Ivan Pechorin’s death was confirmed by the Far East and Arctic Development Corporation, where he had served as aviation director. The corporation has been tasked by the Russian government with developing resources in the Far East and Arctic. Pechorin was reportedly in charge of developing aviation accessibility in the Far East by modernizing airport infrastructure and constructing new runways, among other things.
“On September 12, 2022, the tragic death of our colleague became known,” the corporation said in a brief statement lamenting the “irreparable loss.”
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No further details about the circumstances of his death were provided in the statement, but local media cited Vladivostok officials who said Pechorin, 39, had died on Sept. 10 after falling overboard near Russky Island.
Search efforts went on for two days before Pechorin’s body was found washed ashore. The Russian news outlet Baza, citing an unnamed witness, claimed Pechorin and those on board the boat with him were drunk at the time he fell overboard.
The bizarre incident came just a few months after Igor Nosov, the corporation’s director, died at the age of 43. Russian media reported at the time, citing those who knew Nosov, that he died of a stroke.
It also happened just a few days after Pechorin took part in the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok attended by Putin.
Pechorin now joins a long list of Russian executives to die in strange and mysterious circumstances.
Ravil Maganov, the chairman of the board of Lukoil, Russia’s second-largest oil company, died in a plunge from a hospital window in Moscow earlier this month. Several other gas and oil execs had died in the months prior, including, to name just a few, Alexander Subbotin, a former top Lukoil executive who was found dead in May; Vladislav Avayev, the former vice president of Gazprombank, found dead of a gunshot wound in Moscow in April, along with his wife and daughter; Sergei Protosenya, the former deputy chairman of gas company Novatek, found hanging in a villa in Spain in April; and Gazprom executive Alexander Tyulyakov, found hanged in his St. Petersburg garage in February.
