It’s a particularly deadly time to be on Russian President Putin’s bad side — 39 bodies, piled up since war broke out in Ukraine, collectively underscore the point.
Just this month, two former bigshots bit the dust.
Sergey Grishin, a financial fraudster and oligarch who sold Harry and Meghan their Montecito, California, mansion for $14.7 million, perished from sepsis on March 6.
Coincidence or not, this happened after he criticized Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Virologist Andrey Botikov — who helped develop the controversial Sputnik V Covid vaccine — went in a less subtle manner on March 1: He fell victim to a belt around his neck.
Energy bosses, politicians and outspoken critics are among those who have paid the ultimate price.
Putin and leaders of Russia’s bloodthirsty Kremlin, according to Russian expert Jon O’Neill, have their fingerprints on at least some of the deaths that range from the mysterious to the gruesome to the seemingly accidental.
“Putin does not want to murder people directly,” O’Neill, co-author of “The Dancer and the Devil: Stalin, Pavlova and the Road to the Great Pandemic,” told The Post. “If he does, he gets exposed all over the world. He wants people appearing to kill themselves or seeming to die from unusual diseases. Putin wants to kill people on a deniable basis.
Financial fraudster Sergey Grishin, who sold a mansion to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, criticized Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and died of sepsis.Wikipedia/ CC BY-SA 3.0
“At the same time, everyone in Russia knows that these people are being murdered. It sends a message to those associated with Putin: You better stay in line.”
Suspicious deaths since March of 2022 include Colonel Vadim Boyko, the Ukraine War’s chief of mobilization, who was said to have committed suicide. Just one problem: He was shot five times.
Meanwhile, Marina Yankina, a Russian defense official, plummeted 16 stories to her death from her apartment window.
Although the St. Petersburg news outlet Mash maintained that she had committed suicide and notified her husband before leaping to her death, O’Neill believes that the death of Yankina and other military officials can be tied to failures Russia is experiencing in Ukraine.
“It can’t be a mistake Putin made,” said O’Neill. “It has to be bad execution. Those people know too much about what really happened. That is why they are dying.”