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A second Vladimir Putin critic has died after falling from a hotel window.
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Pavel Antov, 65, died Sunday in India just days after celebrating his 65th birthday.
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A June WhatsApp message linked to Antov’s account was seen as critical of Putin’s war in Ukraine.
A second critic of Vladimir Putin died Sunday after reportedly falling out of a window, Russian media outlet TASS reported.
According to reports, Pavel Antov fell from a hotel window in Rayagada, India, just days after celebrating his 65th birthday. He was visiting the state of Odisha in eastern India.
Antov was the chairman of the Committee on Agrarian Policy, Nature Management and Ecology of the Legislative Assembly of the Vladimir Region and was well known in the region, according to TASS.
“Our colleague, a successful entrepreneur, philanthropist Pavel Antov passed away,” Vice Speaker of the Regional Parliament Vyacheslav Kartukhin said on his Telegram channel, TASS reported. “On behalf of the deputies of the United Russia faction, I express my deep condolences to relatives and friends.”
The speaker of the legislative assembly, Vladimir Kiselyov, called Antov’s death a “difficult and irreparable loss” in a statement on the website of the regional parliament, TASS reported.
Antov was a known critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the BBC reported.
The BBC reported that a since-deleted June WhatsApp message linked to Antov’s account — and shared after a Russian missile strike in Kyiv that killed a man and left his wife and seven-year-old daughter wounded — was seen as critical of Putin’s war in Ukraine.
“It’s extremely difficult to call all this anything but terror,” the WhatsApp message said. Antov quickly deflected on social media, insisting he was a supporter of the war and Putin, adding that the message came from a war critic with whom he does not agree and it was all a misunderstanding, the BBC reported.
Antov is the second Putin critic to die after falling from a window.
In September, Russian energy oligarch Ravil Maganov, 67, died after falling from a hospital window, Insider reported at the time.
The 67-year-old oil tycoon died after his oil company, Lukoil, released a statement expressing “deepest concerns” about President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Another Russian traveling with Antov also reportedly died at the hotel in India on Friday, according to The BBC.
The BBC reported Odisha police Superintendent Vivekananda Sharma said Budanov died of a stroke. Sharma added that Antov “was depressed after his death and he too died.”
Alexei Idamkin, The Russian consul in Kolkata, told the TASS that police did not see a “criminal element in these tragic events,” The BBC reported.
Read the original article on Business Insider
