Putin Ally's Son Dies in 'Strange' Circumstances

Ivan Sechin, the son of Russian state-owned oil giant Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin, died on February 5 at the age of 35, it has been reported.

The death of Sechin, who has worked for Rosneft since March 2014, hadn't been reported until exiled Russian oligarch and staunch Russian President Vladimir Putin critic Leonid Nevzlin drew attention to an entry in the national register of inheritance cases.

The entry in the registry is registered to Ivan Igorevich Sechin, born in 1989, who lived at a building that was previously described as "a house for President Putin's associates," independent Russian news outlets reported.

The Context

There have been numerous unexplained deaths of prominent Russians since Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

In December 2022, Pavel Antov, a member of Putin's United Russia party and a wealthy sausage tycoon who once criticized Putin's invasion of Ukraine, was found dead after a fall from a window in India.

Ravil Maganov, the chairman of Russian oil giant Lukoil, the country's second-largest oil producer, was found dead on September 1, 2022, after falling from a hospital window in Moscow. The circumstances surrounding the 67-year-old's fall remain unexplained. He had worked at Lukoil since 1993.

What We Know

In a post on Facebook, Nevzlin, the one-time head of the Yukos oil giant, described the news as a "strange coincidence."

"Today, when we recalled with my friends and partners why the Kremlin war against Yukos began...it was today that I learned that Igor Sechin had just lost his son. The very same man who fabricated every blatant and bloody case against us. And still," he wrote, sharing a screen grab of the entry.

"Probably hard to believe but my heart goes out to a father who lost his child. How I sympathize with Alexei Navalny's mother. How I sympathized in recent years to Bory Nemtsov's mother, who left us this month," Nevzlin added. "My condolences to Sechin's family, who are forced to hide their grief."

The VChK-OGPU outlet, which purports to have inside information from Russian security forces, also reported on Sechin's death. Citing an unnamed source, it said that at approximately 4.30 a.m. on February 5, Sechin "complained that he felt bad and was suffocating."

"The man fell on the bed and lost consciousness. Those around him carried Ivan to the floor and tried to provide primary resuscitation measures," the Telegram channel said, adding that an ambulance drove for two hours trying to find him.

"When the ambulance arrived at the scene, the doctors were only able to ascertain Ivan's death," VChK-OGPU said, later adding that the cause of death was a "detatched blood clot."

Newsweek couldn't independently verify that claim and has contacted Russia's Foreign Ministry for comment by email.

Views

Olga Lautman, non-resident senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) and a senior investigative researcher at the Institute for European Integrity, said the story was "very strange" given that "the death of the son of one of the most powerful people in Russia has been hidden for 2 weeks."

"This is so interesting that Russia is keeping his death hidden with his father being one of the closest associates of Putin. Very strange," Lautman said in a thread on X, formerly Twitter.

Lautman added: "The reason I'm so fixated on this is because his father, Igor Sechin is one of the most powerful people in the country, one of the closest longtime trusted associates of Putin, and of course KGB."

What's Next?

VChK-OGPU reported that Sechin was buried "on the third day after his death."

His father, Rosneft's CEO, "prohibited employees of the Investigative Committee, the FSB, and other security forces from dealing with issues of Ivan's death," the outlet said.

The Kremlin hasn't commented on the reports.

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