Top Putin Defense Official Found Dead After Falling From High-Rise Building

A 58-year-old high-ranking Russian defense official in the war against Ukraine was found dead Wednesday after falling from a high-rise building.

A passerby found Marina Yankina at the entrance of a high-rise on Zamshina Street, St. Petersburg.

According to New York Post, Yankina, who was a key figure in the funding of President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine, is believed to have fallen about 160 feet to her death.

Yankina's documents and personal belongings were found on a balcony in the building.

As per a preliminary investigation, it is believed that she committed suicide.

A few minutes before allegedly taking her life, she called her former husband and told him what she was planning to do. She also reportedly asked him to summon cops to the place where he lived.

No official motive has been shared, but it was reported that she had been struggling with health issues.

The Russian Investigative Committee confirmed her death and is leading the probe into it.

Yankina is the latest of many Russian officials and business people in Russia to have died under mysterious circumstances since the beginning of the war in Ukraine in 2022.

Many of them were caused by the victims allegedly falling to their deaths, according to Fox News.

In December, Pavel Antov, a sausage tycoon and a politician, was found dead after falling from a window of a hotel in India. His companion, Vladimir Budanov, was also reported to have passed away the same day after having a stroke. Antov had been critical of Putin's war in Ukraine.

In September, Ivan Pechorin, a managing director of an aviation company, was found dead after allegedly falling from a boat while he was intoxicated.

Two weeks before that, Ravil Maganov, the chairman of Russian oil giant Lukoil, died. He reportedly fell from a hospital window in Moscow.

Fox News reported that in August, businessman and Dan Rapoport, also a Putin critic, reportedly jumped to his death from his apartment in Washington, D.C.

Rebekah Koffler, a former Defense Intelligence Agency intel officer for Russian Doctrine and Strategy, said that the mysterious death of Yankina is consistent with the "Russian intelligence doctrine of 'wet affairs' or the spilling of blood."

She shared that this doctrine goes back to the Soviet Union days when the secret police would target critics or dissidents whom they considered to be "enemies of the people." They would kill them through violent means.

She said that in today's Russia, Putin's critics and those unwilling to go along with his "policies are routinely eliminated by assassination."

She shared that poisonings, shots in the back of the head, "forced suicides and other intricate forms of violent death are some examples."

She added that throwing someone out of a window or having the "victim throw herself or himself out of a window is a standard method."