All things being equal in Vlad’s eyes, we have to announce our first female winner in the relatively new Russian sport of Sky Scraper Window Diving.

A top defence official in Russia has been found dead after plunging from a high window in a tower block, in the latest mysterious death of a high-ranking official.

Marina Yankina, 58, was discovered by a passerby at the entrance of a house on Zamshina Street in St Petersburg. She is believed to have fallen 160ft to her death.

Reports of financial director of the Western military zone of RU ministry of defense Marina Yankina falling out of a window in Sankt Petersburg.

RU financiers are losing their battle vs open windows.#NaziRussia #StandWithUkraine pic.twitter.com/DpxIzd8pxg

— olexander scherba🇺🇦 (@olex_scherba) February 16, 2023

Yankina was a very well-placed Russian defense department power broker. She’d risen from the tax collecting ranks, moved to the defense department, and was basically Putin’s money girl for their Western Military District.

…Ms Yankina was a key figure in the funding of Vladimir Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine as head of the financial support department of the Ministry of Defence for the Western Military District, which is closely involved in the dictator’s invasion.

…’Her career had developed rapidly,’ stated the [Mash on Moika] outlet. ‘In five years, she rose from an ordinary employee to the head of the entire department. Meanwhile, the death of the employee was officially confirmed by the press service of the Western Military District.’

The Western Military District leadership, where Yankina was in charge of the cash flows, has certainly been under ernormous pressure from Putin. There’s been a revolving door of chiefs, as Putin sacks one after another in the face of multiple set-backs and costly losses.

…The Western Military District has incurred some of the heaviest losses in Russia’s war against Ukraine—and been blamed for a string of humiliating battlefield losses.

Colonel-General Alexander Zhuravlyov was sent packing as commander of the district in October following huge losses in Kharkiv. His successor, Lieutenant-General Roman Berdnikov, was sacked a few months later after lasting less than three months.

Colonel-General Sergey Kuzovlev then took the helm, only to be replaced a few weeks later by Lieutenant General Yevgeny Nikiforov.

🚨 #Russia: Marina #Yankina, head of finance for the Western Military District in the Defence Ministry has been assassinated by defenestration (out the window) in St. Petersburg. General #Gerasimov embezzled millions in this district and is likely eliminating witnesses. pic.twitter.com/64c2c9PAnZ

— Igor Sushko (@igorsushko) February 16, 2023

Who is this embezzling General Gerasimov? Digging around, you find he’s just the sort of guy who might truly be up to “housecleaning,” considering he just got a big promotion last month…sort of. Bet life expectancy is looking pretty tenuous for him now, too.

Putin burns through another top Ukraine commander as armed forces chief is handed ‘poisoned chalice’

Russia’s Defense Ministry announced yet another realignment of the commanders leading the war in Ukraine on Wednesday, as criticism mounts over its handling of the stalled campaign.

The ministry said that General Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian General Staff, would become the overall commander of the campaign, with the current commander, Sergey Surovikin, becoming one of his three deputies.

…But the decision puts Gerasimov, who has been chief of the General Staff for more than a decade, closer to direct supervision of the campaign – and to responsibility for it. While Gerasimov was a key figure in planning the invasion, he appears to have been at arm’s length since, with just one reported visit to the command of the campaign inside Ukraine, though the Defense Ministry did not confirm that either.

Mark Galeotti, senior associate fellow with the Royal United Services Institute, said “it is a kind of demotion [for Gerasimov] or at least the most poisoned of chalices. It’s now on him, and I suspect Putin has unrealistic expectations again.”

Yeah. His borscht is boiled. Stick a spoon in it.

While there are some interesting theories regarding Yankina’s unfortunate trip over the sill, it does bear mentioning again just how many prominent Russians have come a cropper in truly bizarre – and remarkably repetitive – “met their demise” scenarios.

Most have been *winkwink* “suicides.”

Take this fellow, for instance. If at first you don’t succeed? Fire, fire again.

…In November, Col. Vadim Boiko, 44, deputy head of the Makarov Pacific Higher Naval School in Vladivostok, was found dead from multiple gunshot wounds in what has been described as a suicide.

Boiko, who played a role in Putin’s partial mobilization efforts, “executed” himself with five gunshots to the chest in his commander’s office after allegedly being set up to take the fall for some of the problems plaguing the invasion of Ukraine, according to his widow.

Russians are nothing if not doggedly determined.

In December, I posted about the Russian sausage tycoon who’d been critical of Putin’s missile attacks on Kyiv, then fell out of a window at an Indian luxury hotel, barely three days after his best bro was found dead in the same resort. The broski’s death was attributed to a heart attack.

Right.

The strangest confluence of ghastly circumstances has got the Russian military and industrial hierarchy/oligarchy dropping like flies…literally multiple floors, in many cases. I’ve pulled a few of them for the list below and believe me – it’s just a sampling:

• Pavel Antonov – fell out a window

• Aleksey Maslov, 69, former chief of Russian Ground Forces – died “suddenly”

• Aleksandr Buzakov, head of Russia’s ‘admiralty shipyards’ – died “suddenly”

• Yevgeny Lobachev, retired Major General of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation – found dead, “pistol nearby”

• Dmitry Zelenov, real estate tycoon – tumbled down a flight of stairs

• Anatoly Gerashchenko, former head of Moscow’s Aviation Institute – tumbled down a flight of stairs

• Ivan Pechorin, managing director of Putin’s Far East and Arctic Development Corporation – fell overboard

• Ravil Maganov, oil tycoon – fell out a window

As the Ukraine War drags on and things become more desperate, expect more of Vlad’s friends to drop. Now that Yankina has broken the glass ceiling for taking out female department officials – not just incidentally murdering wives and children of your main target – the terrifying reality for Russians of any note is that Vlad’s going to hold a perpetual Katy bar-the-door assassination fest fit of pique, and everyone gets to play.

Unless somebody gets him.