It has only been a month since Vladimir Makarov was relieved of his post as deputy head of the Russian Interior Ministry’s “counter-extremism” directorate, the body tasked with cracking down on dissent against President Vladimir Putin. The former official was found dead in his home on Monday: he took his own life, as the state news agency Tass wrote, in a new episode to add to the wake of oligarchs or former Russian leaders who died mysteriously in quickly liquidated cases as “suicides”.
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Makarov, 72, “was found in the village of Golikovo, near Moscow. Law enforcement officials said he committed suicide,” the news agency reported, explaining that “the incident” occurred on the morning of February 13 and recalling that the major general “in January of this year he was relieved of his post as deputy head of the Directorate for Combating Extremism.’ A term by which in Moscow we mean opposition groups – such as the foundation of imprisoned dissident Alexey Navalny – or media critical of the Kremlin. Makarov “was described in the past as the main organizer of the hunt for opposition activists and troublesome journalists” and “had helped to oversee Russia’s repression”, writes the Moscow Times.
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According to sources on the Telegram channel Baza, which is believed to have links to the Russian security services, Makarov allegedly shot himself with a gas shotgun in the presence of his wife after a period of depression following his torpedoing. Makarov is only the latest high-ranking security figure to die by apparent suicide in recent months: last summer, retired FSB Major General Yevgeny Lobachev and Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Major General Lev Sotskov died in two cases treated as suicides. And there is a long series of mysterious deaths involving Russian leaders, officials and oligarchs since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine. Cases often shrouded in mystery, between apparent murders-suicides, accidents or suspicious falls. As in the case of Pavel Antov, deputy of the czar’s United Russia party, who flew three floors down from a hotel in India last December, after explicitly criticizing the war, only to then apologize “sincerely”. Previously, the creative director of the Russian company Agima, Grigory Kochenov, had also fallen from a balcony, this time of his house in Nizhny Novgorod, during a police search. Kochenov had never made a secret of his opposition to the war. Ravil Maganov, chairman of the board of directors of Lukoil, fell from a window of a Moscow clinic on September 1st. The disappearance of tycoon Alexander Tyulakov, deputy director general of Gazprom, was also unclear. On February 25, he was found lifeless in the garage of his house due to suspected suicide. Just the day after the invasion.