The Daily Populous Friday March 15th, 2024 morning edition
Authored by euronews.com and submitted by InnerPace

Vitaly Robertus, 54, is reportedly the fourth Lukoil manager to die in two years.

Russian news media reported on Thursday the sudden death of Vitaly Robertus, Vice President of the country’s oil and gas giant Lukoil, writing that the manager died from suicide in his office this week.

Just before his death, local media wrote that Robertus had complained of suffering headaches and asking for medications before going to his office.

He was later found hanged in the room.

"He didn't leave for several hours and didn’t answer his phone. The employees decided to go into his office and found his body. The top manager died by suicide of asphyxia. He had worked at the company for about 30 years,” Baza wrote on Telegram reporting the manager’s death.

According to the publication, Lukoil announced the death of Robertus on March 12.

In March 2022, the board of the privately owned company called for an end to the conflict in Ukraine.

They expressed “empathy for all victims who are affected by this tragedy” and urged a “settlement of problems through serious negotiations and diplomacy.”

The company, estimated to produce 2% of the world’s crude oil, suffered greatly from sanctions imposed on Moscow by the US following the Ukraine invasion.

The energy giant didn't incur EU sanctions, however.

Robertus is the fourth Lukoil’s manager and the latest in a long list of tycoons and billionaires to suddenly die under mysterious circumstances since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022.

Former Lukoil’s top manager Alexander Subbotin, 43, was found dead in May 2022 in the basement of a house in the town of Mytishchi of an alleged drug-induced heart attack.

Lukoil’s former chairman Ravil Maganov, 67, died in September 2022 after falling from a window of Moscow’s Central Clinical Hospital.

In late October 2023, Vladimir Nekrasov, chairman of Lukoil’s board, died of what the company said was heart failure at the age of 66.