A high-ranking Russian oil executive died on Thursday after falling from a sixth-floor hospital window in Moscow, the country’s state media reported, the latest in a series of deaths of businessmen with ties to the energy industry since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.
Ravil Maganov, the chairman of Lukoil, Russia’s second-largest oil producer, fell out of a window at the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow, according to a report by Channel 1, the country’s leading state-owned television network. The report said that the clinic had confirmed the incident.
Lukoil, the country’s biggest private company, said in a statement on its website that Mr. Maganov “had passed away following a severe illness.” It did not elaborate.
Tass, the Russian state-run news agency, called Mr. Maganov’s death a suicide. It cited an unnamed source in law enforcement who said that Mr. Maganov, 67, had been hospitalized after a heart attack and that he was taking antidepressant pills. Russian investigators were on the scene, Tass said.
Reuters, though, reported that two people who knew Mr. Maganov well said that they believed it was highly unlikely that he had taken his own life.
Other Russian executives tied to the energy industry have died under suspicious circumstances in the months since the invasion of Ukraine.
On Feb. 25, one day after President Vladimir V. Putin ordered troops to cross the Ukrainian border, Alexander Tyulakov, a deputy general director of the treasury for Gazprom, Russia’s energy giant, was found dead in his garage near St. Petersburg, the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported. The report described his death as a suicide.
In April, Vladislav Avayev, a former deputy president of Gazprombank, one of the largest Russian lenders and a bank with ties to Gazprom, was found dead in an apartment in Moscow along with the bodies of his wife and daughter. The investigators said it appeared that Mr. Avayev fatally shot the two before taking his own life, according to Kommersant, a Russian newspaper.
In May, Tass reported that Aleksandr Subbotin, a former Lukoil executive, was found dead in a basement of a house in Mytishchi, a town outside Moscow. The police opened a criminal investigation, the report said.
Lukoil said that Mr. Maganov started his career in the energy industry as an oil operator at a company that later merged with others to form Lukoil, eventually working his way up to become one of Russia’s top oil executives. In a statement, the company said that thanks to Mr. Maganov the company “evolved from a small oil production group to one of the world’s leading energy companies in next to no time.”
In March, Lukoil took an unusual stance among Russian businesses by calling for a “fast resolution” to the invasion of Ukraine, distancing itself from the official Kremlin line.
The statement, from the board of directors, headed by Mr. Maganov, expressed the company’s “deepest concerns about the tragic events in Ukraine” and called for “the soonest termination of the armed conflict.”
“We strongly support a lasting cease-fire and a settlement of problems through serious negotiations and diplomacy,” the company said.
The statement appeared to be a way to protect Lukoil’s international interests as Western criticism rained down on Russia after the invasion. Lukoil is one of the most recognizable Russian brands in the United States, where it has a network of more than 200 franchised gasoline stations.
