The Millionaire

Russian sausage tycoon Pavel Antov has been found dead at an Indian hotel, Two Days after a friend died during the same trip.

They were visiting The Eastern state of Odisha and The Millionaire , who was also a local politician, had just celebrated his birthday at The Hotel .

Antov was a well known figure in The City of Vladimir, east of Moscow .

Last Summer he denied criticising Russia's war in Ukraine after a message appeared on his WhatsApp account.

The Millionaire 's death is the latest in a series of unexplained deaths involving Russian tycoons since the start of The Russian invasion, many of whom have openly criticised The War .

Reports in Russian media said Mr Antov, 65, had fallen from a window at The Hotel in The City of Rayagada on Sunday. Another member of his four-strong Russian group, Vladimir Budanov, died at The Hotel on Friday.

Superintendent Vivekananda Sharma of Odisha police said Mr Budanov was found to have suffered a stroke while his friend " was depressed after his death and he too died". The Russian consul in Kolkata, Alexei Idamkin, told the Tass news agency that police did not see a " criminal element in these tragic events".

Tourist guide Jitendra Singh told reporters that Mr Budanov may have " consumed a lot of alcohol as he had liquor bottles".

Pavel Antov founded the Vladimir Standard meat processing plant and in 2019 Forbes estimated his fortune at some $140m (£118m) at The Top of Russia's rich list of lawmakers and civil servants.

He played an important role at the legislative assembly in Vladimir, heading a committee on agrarian policy and ecology. The Assembly 's deputy chairman Vyacheslav Kartukhin said he had died in " tragic circumstances".

Late last June he appeared to react to a Russian missile attack on a residential block in the Shevchenkivskyi district of Kyiv that left A Man dead and his seven-year-old daughter and her mother wounded.

A WhatsApp message on Antov's account described how The Family were pulled out of the rubble: " It's extremely difficult to call all this anything but terror. "

The Message was deleted and Antov then posted on Social Media that he was a supporter of The President , a " patriot of my country" and backed The War .

The WhatsApp message had come from someone whose opinion on the " special military operation in Ukraine" he strongly disagreed with, he insisted. It had been posted accidentally on his messenger and was a highly annoying misunderstanding, He Said .

Several high-profile Russian tycoons have died in mysterious circumstances since The War began.

In September The Head of Russia's oil giant Lukoil, Ravil Maganov, apparently fell from a hospital window in Moscow .

Source of news: bbc.com