Russia’s ‘highest-earning elected politician’ who had criticised Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine has been found dead after a mysterious fall from a hotel in India.

Sausage multi-millionaire Pavel Antov, from the main pro-Putin party United Russia, had been on a trip to celebrate his upcoming 66th birthday.

A male friend in his party had died ‘from a heart attack’ on Thursday last week, and the wealthy politician perished two days later. …

In June, Antov criticised the war and air strikes on Kyiv as Russian ‘terror’ wounding Ukrainian civilians.

He highlighted a Russian missile strike and said: ‘A girl has been pulled out from under the rubble, the girl’s father appears to have died.

‘The mother is trying to be pulled out with a crane – she is trapped under a slab. To tell the truth, it is extremely difficult to call this anything other than terror.’

[It’s difficult to call Putin’s regime anything other than a gangster state, too. — Ed]