Ruminations: Just ... Coincidentally

"I heard three shots and shouting. A woman was screaming. Then two more shots were fired. No one else was screaming."
"I looked out the window -- I thought it was fireworks. It turned out they weren't."
"My mother told me it was definitely gunshots."
Neighbour of Vladislav Avayev, Moscow

"He was a smart man, almost the head of Gazprombank. I had seen him -- he did not look like a maniac. He was a nerd."
"He had no reason to do that. He was rich, smart."
"There's no way a man like that could kill."
Neighbour of Vladislav Avayev, Moscow

Vladislav Avayev (pictured), 51, was found in his elite Moscow penthouse alongside his wife Yelena, 47, and daughter, Maria, 13

Very recently two puzzling deaths of high-profile Russian oligarchs. One day apart; one discovered in Moscow, the other in Spain. Both prominent men, both met violent ends. Investigators in Russia would like to convey the impression that both were suicides. Murder-suicides, since their family members were murdered. Ostensibly, by the very men who supposedly committed suicide. On two occasions, on two consecutive days, two separate families of immensely wealthy men, wiped out.

A neighbour had contacted the daughter of one of the men, Vladislav Avayev, because she had heard disturbing sounds coming from his million-dollar residence that made her suspicious. Which led 26-year-led Anastasia to visit his Moscow apartment. There she found her 51-year-old father, her mother Yelena, 47, and her younger sister Maria, age 13. All shot to death. She contacted police, informing them she had found a gun in her father's hand.

Her father, Vladislav, was a former vice-president of the state energy corporation, Gazprombank, and was also a Kremlin official. Vladislav Avayev had made his fortune in construction, following which he was appointed a deputy head of a Kremlin major department. He had resigned from his post as Gazprom vice-president. From Russia's third-largest bank, the main oil and gas payments bank in Russia.

Sergey Protosenya (right), 55, who had a fortune of over £330 million, is believed to have hacked his wife Natalia (centre) and their 18-year-old daughter to death before hanging himself in the courtyard of his Lloret de Mar villa on Spain's Costa Brava

According to Russian police, any leads will be investigated, in his personal and professional life. They had discovered a collection of 13 weapons in the apartment. Investigators are also involved in another death, one that took place on April 19, when Sergei Protosenya, formerly on the board of directors for Russian natural gas company Novatek was found dead. His wife and daughter were discovered hacked to death inside a Spanish villa in Costa Brava.

The 55-year-old Sergei Protosenya himself was found hanging in the villa courtyard. The police theory is that Protosenya had killed his wife and daughter using an axe and knife,and then took his own life. According to local reports, however, someone had taken precautions to ensure no fingerprints were left on the murder weapon. The local news outlet El Punt Avui had it that no suicide note had been left behind, and when Protosenya's body was found there was no blood on it.

These were not the only puzzling deaths of Russians high on the administrative hierarchy of a country at war, where many within the various arms of the Kremlin, as well as journalists, educators and ordinary Russians, along with Russian-Ukrainians have voiced timid dissent over their country launching a deadly conflict with its neighbour. Some oligarchs and influential Russians have spoken out publicly and gone into exile. Some have remained in Russia, and been arrested for sedition.

Two other deaths remain unsolved; that of 61-year-old Gazprom former deputy Alexander Tyulyakov who, the day after Russia invaded Ukraine, was found hanged near St.Petersburg, in a cabin. His body hung ln his garage, a suicide note next to him. He had been deputy general director at Gazprom after working there for a decade.

In January, Leonid Shulman, 60, head of Gazprom's transport service, died a suicide, found in the bathroom of a Leningrad-region cabin. The note he left behind spoke of a broken leg and the knife, cause of his death, found in a bathtub beside him, but out of reach. He was found in a pool of blood, his body punctured by multiple stab wounds.