Mikhail Lesin's final hours

What we know and wish we knew about the death controversy that just won't die

On March 10, 2016, local authorities in Washington, D.C., released the autopsy report on Mikhail Lesin, who was Russia’s former press minister from 1999 to 2004, before serving as an advisor to President Putin and working as a mass media executive. Lesin had died five months earlier on November 5, 2015. Initial reports said he may have suffered a heart attack, but the autopsy revealed that his body showed signs of injuries. At the time, investigators offered no explanation for how the injuries may have occurred. More than a year later, on July 28, 2017, BuzzFeed brought Lesin’s death back into the spotlight with an article claiming that “multiple U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials” suspect he was “whacked” with a baseball bat because he was preparing to cooperate with the FBI. Meduza reviews what we know about Lesin’s death, and looks again at the controversy that refuses to go away.

What we know

Mikhail Lesin died on November 5, 2015, in his room at the Doyle Dupont Circle Hotel in Washington, D.C. The first reports in Russia’s news media claimed that the 57-year-old former press minister suffered a heart attack. Lesin’s body was buried in Los Angeles on November 13.

In January 2015, Lesin resigned from his position as director of the Gazprom-Media holding company. One of the most noteworthy events during Lesin’s tenure as the company’s director was a public feud with the liberal radio station Ekho Moskvy, when Alexander Plushev was temporarily removed from the air for supposedly offensive content he shared on his personal Twitter account. Lesin met with the radio station’s staff, and rumors swirled that long-time chief editor Alexey Venediktov would be fired. Instead, roughly a month after the scandal, it was Lesin who left his job, and Plushev and Venediktov still work at Ekho to this day. After leaving Gazprom-Media, Lesin never again held another public position.

Lesin was suspected of laundering money in the United States. In 2014, Senator Roger Wicker asked police to investigate Lesin’s $30-million real estate holdings in California, which the Mississippi senator suspected may have been acquired with illegally obtained money. In December 2014, Wicker’s request reached the FBI, but no case was opened officially. Lesin claimed that the property belonged to his children.

Official reports state that Mikhail Lesin died of blunt force trauma to the head. Lesin’s body also reportedly sustained injuries to his neck, torso, arms, and legs. In March 2016, anonymous sources told The New York Times that the injuries resulted from “some sort of altercation that happened before he returned to his hotel room.” The D.C. medical examiner’s office did not release its full autopsy report, publishing only small excerpts.

Controversies and conspiracies

Was Mikhail Lesin killed? In October 2016, the U.S. Justice Department closed its investigation into Lesin’s death, amending the manner of death from “undetermined” to “accident.” The case’s chief medical examiner determined that Lesin died of several blunt force injuries which were “induced by falls,” with “acute ethanol intoxication as a contributory cause of death.”

What was Lesin doing in Washington? For many years, Mikhail Lesin’s life was closely tied to the United States, but he was a West Coast man, and didn’t frequent the East Coast. His children own lavish property in Los Angeles, and Lesin’s long-time partner Victoria Rakhimbayeva (with whom he had a daughter) calls L.A. the greatest city on Earth. The independent television station Dozhd reported that Lesin met up with a friend the night he died and returned to his hotel room in a drunken state, perhaps getting into a fight on his way back.

Did the FBI, or some other agency, make contact with Lesin? The leading conspiracy theory has been that Lesin apparently decided to cooperate with the FBI, wishing to remain in the United States after resigning from Gazprom-Media. For this, he was supposedly killed. Others have claimed that Lesin actually faked his death and is to this day living quietly under another name in U.S. witness protection.

In January 2016, without providing concrete evidence, The Daily Beast published an article claiming that “all signs point to the former Kremlin propaganda boss cutting a deal with the FBI.” The latest revelations by BuzzFeed support these allegations, but they are once again based on anonymous sources without firsthand knowledge of the investigation into Lesin’s death.

In March 2016, The Moscow Times reported another detail in the Lesin story: he may have owed a large sum of money to Yury Kovalchuk, a close associate of President Vladimir Putin and a major shareholder in the Gazprom-Media.