Catherine Belton, in her gripping book Putin's People, mentions a trio of deaths by window mishap that occurred within weeks of each other back in 1991, when the Soviet Union was being dismantled and the KGB was busily covering its tracks. All three held secrets about the Communist Party's finances and where the missing billions had gone as the Soviet system unravelled. Thirty years ago perhaps but the fashion for defenestration seems to be making a comeback. In October last year, a senior diplomat fell out of a window of the Russian embassy in Berlin. In December in Moscow, the founder of a nationalist blog who was also a vocal critic of Putin fell to his death out a window. In August, a Latvian-American investment banker and, you guessed it, a vocal critic of Putin, appeared to have fallen from an apartment window in Washington DC. In a "coincidence" likely to snap credulity, his business partner took a window fall from a Moscow apartment in 2017. Four health care workers fell from windows after reportedly protesting the government's handling of the COVID pandemic in 2020. Also in 2020, a scientist working on a COVID vaccine fell to his death from an apartment window in St Petersburg.

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If you rag on Putin, don't go near the window - The Canberra Times