A 92-year-old scientist who created the first Soviet two-stage RDS-37 thermonuclear bomb has been found hanged in his apartment.
Grigory Klinishov was found dead at his central Moscow home, as Russian investigators said they were probing the death of the nonagenarian atomic expert.
Klinishov was reported to have died on June 17. Officials said a suicide note was found next to his body.
A top secret bomb designer, Klinishov won the Lenin Prize in 1962. He was most well known as one of the creators of the Soviet RDS-37 – a thermonuclear bomb first tested in 1955.
Klinishov’s death follows a slew of suspicious deaths of oligarchs and high profile Russians, particularly those linked to business executives at Russian energy giant Gazprom.
Klinishov – whose photograph was never released by the Soviet authorities – was found by his daughter, 67.
The scientist was a creator of the first Soviet two-stage thermonuclear bomb RDS-37, tested on 22 November 1955 at Semipalatinsk training ground by dropping it from a Tu-16 bomber.
Born in 1930, the bomb designer developed several types of thermonuclear bomb charges for subsequent generations.
The Russian Investigative Committee said: ‘A note was found next to the scientist, on whose neck injuries characteristic of hanging were found.
‘The reasons for the suicide could be the severe illness of the scientist and the death of his wife.’
However a probe was underway pending a decision on whether to initiate a criminal case into his death, said the committee.
But Klinishov’s suicide follows a string of mysterious deaths in recent years linked to high-profile Russians.
It comes just months after Andrey Botikov – one of the 18 scientists who worked on the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine in 2020 – was found strangled to death with a belt in his Moscow home.
Russia’s investigative committee has launched a murder investigation following the death.
Most notable have been the successive suspicious deaths related to business executives at Russian energy giant Gazprom.
Novaya Gazeta Europe, a leading investigative news outlet, and Transparency International Russia, claimed that the high-profile Russian businessmen who have died in suspicious circumstances were linked to a multi-million dollar money-laundering scheme.
The day after the war in Ukraine started, Alexander Tyulyakov, deputy head of corporate security at Gazprom’s United Settlement Centre, the energy giant’s ‘treasury’ allegedly committed suicide.
