Daughter of Putin ally is found dead in her Moscow apartment after ‘feeling unwell’

The glamorous daughter of a Putin ally has been found dead in her Moscow apartment after feeling ‘unwell’.

Natalia Bochkareva, 44, the daughter of former Putin ally Vasily Bochkarev, was found dead in her apartment in Moscow’s Presnensky district on July 11.

The janitor of her apartment called the police to report that she no longer answered the door.

But when the police went to the property and forced the front door, they discovered her corpse.

It comes as the latest in a long line of public figures who suddenly fall ill and die in Russia.

According to preliminary reports, there were no signs of a violent death. She was the daughter of the late Mr. Bochkarev, who administered Penza Oblast from 1998 to 2015.

The 67-year-old, who belonged to Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party, died of lung cancer a year after leaving office.

Mrs. Bochkareva ran the family woodworking and bakery businesses after her father’s death.

But two years ago, she made headlines after falling victim to a scam when she sent a self-proclaimed fortune teller RUB 16 million (GBP 136,000) to lift a curse.

However, after receiving the money, the fortune teller had cut off all contact with Natalia and failed to fulfill her part of their agreement.

Russia has been hit by a number of ‘suspicious’ deaths – many related to the energy sector – since tensions escalated ahead of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

In January, Magomed Abdulayev, 61, close to ex-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, was rammed by a car and died of serious injuries in Makhachkala on the Caspian Sea.

Ukraine immediately suggested that this was the latest in a string of Russian deaths over the past year, dominated by Vladimir Putin’s war.

Pravda Geraschenko Telegram channel, run by Ukrainian official Anton Geraschenko posted, “Another mysterious death of a Russian official.

“A car hit and killed the former Prime Minister of Dagestan in Makhachkala.

“Russian media reports that Magomed Abdulayev, 61, was the victim of a car accident when he crossed the road in the wrong place.”

And wealthy politician Nikolay Petrunin – aka Russia’s “Gas Wonderkid” – was only 47 and in a coma for a month when he died last October.

The multimillionaire, father of three, formerly a top executive in the gas industry, is believed to have died from complications related to severe Covid.

He was deputy chairman of Russia’s parliament’s powerful energy committee and a Putin loyalist and “political protégé.”

His companies built gas pipelines for major Russian energy companies, and he had ties to the Kremlin gas giant Gazprom — now starving the West of Russian supplies because of the war — and Rosneft. He stated an annual salary of up to £1.75 million.

And on September 1 last year, 67-year-old oil tycoon Ravil Maganov fell to his death through a window on the sixth floor of a Moscow hospital.

According to one report, he was ‘punched’ before being ‘thrown out the window’, but this was not officially confirmed.

Two more deaths of Gazprom-affiliated executives were also reported last year amid suspicions that their apparent suicides may have been homicides.

Alexander Tyulakov, 61, a senior Gazprom finance and security official at the level of deputy general manager, was found dead in a noose at his £500,000 home a day after Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022.

But he had been badly beaten shortly before he “took his own life,” leading to speculation that he was under intense pressure, according to reports.

Leonid Shulman, 60, head of transportation at Gazprom Invest, was also found dead with multiple stab wounds in a pool of blood on his bathroom floor in Leningrad, Russia.

And billionaire Alexander Subbotin, 43, also linked to Kremlin-friendly energy giant Lukoil where he was a top manager, was found dead in May after “taking advice from shamans.”