Andrei Badalov, a 62-year-old vice president at Russian state oil pipeline company Transneft, has been found dead outside his apartment building in Moscow, with authorities treating the case as a suspected suicide.
Local media outlets Baza, Mash, and Shot reported that Badalov fell from the 17th floor of the building on Friday morning, though he resided on the 10th floor. In a haunting detail, Telegram channel ‘112’ revealed that he sent a farewell text message to his wife — who passed away in 2018 — shortly before his death.
A source told Russian state news agency TASS that preliminary findings point to suicide as the cause of death. Badalov’s daughter, speaking to VChK-OGPU, said he had appeared emotionally drained in recent weeks but had not expressed suicidal intentions. “I don’t know how it happened — maybe it was an accident, or maybe someone pushed him to it… He didn’t leave me any notes,” she said, according to The Moscow Times.
Badalov had served as Transneft’s vice president since 2021, overseeing digital transformation and IT. Prior to that, he worked at the Voskhod Research Institute.
His death is the latest in a series of at least 11 mysterious deaths involving top executives in Russia’s oil and gas sector — including figures from Lukoil, Gazprom, and Novatek — since the start of the war in Ukraine.
About The Author
