The young vice president of a Russian bank plunged to her death from her 11th-floor apartment window in Moscow, marking yet another mysterious falling death in the country, according to reports.
Kristina Baikova, the 28-year-old VP of Loko-Bank, plummeted from her window on June 23 and was pronounced dead at the scene, according to the Baza Telegram channel.
The bank executive was with a 34-year-old male friend named Andrei at the time of her fatal fall, Baza reported.
The man said he was invited by Baikova to her Khodynsky Boulevard apartment for drinks and that she had gone out onto her balcony before she tumbled to the ground below.
Baikova is the latest Russian executive to have died after falling from a building window in what has become a suspicious trend, the Daily Mail reported.
Dan Rapoport, a well-known Vladimir Putin critic who was exiled from Russia, was found dead after plunging from his Washington DC luxury apartment building last August in what some had suggested was a suicide — claims his wife refuted.
Weeks later, Russian oil giant Lukoil chair Ravil Maganov fell from a six-floor window at a hospital in Moscow and died. Before his death, Lukoil had been vocal about its criticism of Putin and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to Euro Weekly News.
Then in December, the creative director of an IT company Grigory Kochenov plunged from his apartment balcony and fell to his death while Russian authorities searched his apartment.
The same month, a Russian sausage tycoon fell to his death from a hotel window in India just two days after his friend, also from Russia, died at the same hotel. A Russian real-estate tycoon also took a fatal tumble down a flight of stairs while in the French Riviera in December.
And just earlier this month, a federal judge Artyom Bartenev fell 12 stories from his apartment building and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Some two dozen Russian officials and oligarchs died under mysterious circumstances in 2022 alone, The Atlantic reported — while naming the trend “Sudden Russian Death Syndrome.”
Baikova’s death is being investigated.
