Top Russian oil executive dies ‘suddenly’ after falling from 17th-storey apartment window

A top Russian oil executive has died after falling from a window of his high-end apartment building in a Moscow suburb, Mash, a pro-Kremlin breaking news Telegram channel reported on Friday.

Andrey Badalov, a 62-year-old vice president at Transneft, the world’s largest pipeline operator and transporter of over 80% of Russia’s crude oil annually, died after falling from the 17th storey, despite living on the apartment building’s 10th floor, Baza, another pro-Kremlin Telegram channel reported on Friday.

“The preliminary cause of death is suicide”, a law enforcement source told TASS, a Russian state-owned news agency.

“We are grieving the irreparable loss that has befallen our team. In the prime of his life and creative work, the life of a wonderful man, a unique professional, a reliable colleague and comrade was cut short”, Transneft said in a company statement confirming Badalov’s “sudden death”.

Badalov’s death marks at least the tenth such case of a top executive in Russia’s oil and gas industry dying under mysterious circumstances since the start of the war in Ukraine, according to calculations by Echo, an independent broadcaster.

Most notably, in March 2024, Vitaly Robertus, a vice president of Lukoil, Russia’s largest private oil company, died “suddenly” by suicide in his office, after two chairmen had also previously died unexpectedly.

From 2019 to 2021, Badalov headed the Voskhod Research Institute, a subordinate body of Russia’s Finance Ministry, responsible for developing government IT projects, such as the automated electoral systems.

In July 2021, Badalov was appointed vice president at Transneft, where he helped manage the company’s digital transformation, including the automation of oil production and business activities.