Image copyright Maxim Borodin/Facebook Image caption Maxim Borodin had contacted a friend the day before he was found seriously injured beneath his fifth-floor flat

A Russian investigative journalist who wrote about the deaths of mercenaries in Syria has died in hospital after falling from his fifth-floor flat.

Maxim Borodin was found badly injured by neighbours in Yekaterinburg and taken to hospital, where he later died.

Local officials said no suicide note was found but the incident was unlikely to be of a criminal nature.

However, a friend revealed Borodin had said his flat had been surrounded by security men a day earlier.

Vyacheslav Bashkov described Borodin as a "principled, honest journalist" and said Borodin had contacted him at five o'clock in the morning on 11 April saying there was "someone with a weapon on his balcony and people in camouflage and masks on the staircase landing".

Borodin had been looking for a lawyer, he explained, although he later called him back saying he was wrong and that the security men had been taking part in some sort of exercise.

After he was found badly injured at the foot of the building on Thursday, regional authorities said the door of his flat had been locked from the inside, indicating that no-one else had either entered or left the flat.

The chief editor of Novy Den, where Borodin worked, said before he died that she could not rule out a crime, adding there was no reason for him to kill himself.

Harlem Désir of the international monitoring organisation OSCE said the death was "of serious concern" and called for a thorough investigation.

What did Borodin write?

In recent weeks, the journalist had written about Russian mercenaries known as the "Wagner Group" who were reportedly killed in Syria on 7 February in a confrontation with US forces.

Last week, the outgoing head of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, said that "a couple hundred" Russian mercenaries died in the clash in Deir al-Zour province. The mercenaries were apparently taking part in an attack by pro-Syrian government fighters on the headquarters of a US ally, the Syrian Democratic Forces.

Weeks later Russia admitted that several dozen Russian citizens had been either killed or wounded, but stressed they were not regular soldiers.

Last month, Borodin had written that three of those killed had come from the Sverdlovsk region in the Urals, in which Yekaterinburg is the main city. Two of the men were from the towns of Asbest and one from Kedrovoye, he said.

He had also investigated political scandals, including allegations made by a Belarusian escort known as Nastya Rybka in a video posted by Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Journalism is a dangerous business in Russia

Journalists in Russia have often been harassed or attacked in recent years for their work. On the same day that Maxim Borodin was found fatally injured, the editor of an official regional newspaper was assaulted in Yekaterinburg, reports say.

Much of Russia's media is controlled by the state and Russia is ranked 83rd out of 100 countries for press freedom by Freedom House.

One of Russia's best-known investigative reporters, Anna Politkovskaya, was shot dead in a lift at her block of flats in 2006. Politkovskaya exposed Russian human rights abuses in Chechnya.

Image copyright AFP Image caption Anna Politkovskaya's reports were highly critical of President Vladimir Putin

Two years later, journalist Mikhail Beketov was left brain-damaged. He had highlighted corruption and fought against the planned destruction of the Khimki forest near Moscow to make way for a road. He died in 2013.

Oleg Kashin, was severely injured in an assault in Moscow in 2010. He had been reporting on protests against the Khimki forest highway.

Last year, well-known Russian radio presenter Tatyana Felgengauer was stabbed in the neck while at work at her radio station, Ekho Mosvky.</s>Russian investigative journalist Maksim Borodin of Yekaterinburg has died of injuries sustained on April 12 when he fell from the window of his fifth-floor apartment.

Borodin, 32, died on April 15 in a hospital without recovering consciousness.

Officially, his death was being considered a suicide.

Polina Rumyantseva, the editor in chief of Novy Den, where Borodin worked, said the same day that she did not believe Borodin committed suicide.

In recent weeks, he had written extensively about the deaths in February of Russian mercenaries fighting in Syria.

With reporting by Novy Den, RIA Novosti, and Grani.ru</s>Maxim Borodin had earlier called to say he feared a police raid at his home. A local rights activist told The Independent: 'We have a chain of events that has led to a very suspicious death'A prominent regional journalist investigating crime, politics and the war in Syria has died following a fall from a window of his fourth-floor apartment in Yekaterinburg, Russia's fourth-largest city.Maxim Borodin, 32, was found by neighbours on the ground outside his apartment on Friday. He died in hospital two days later, without ever regaining consciousness.Mr Borodin was well-known for delving into Yekaterinburg's criminal underworld. He was among those who broke the story of unreported deaths in the Kremlin's shadow armies fighting in Syria. He also published investigations into Russia's religious right, and the violent protests around Matilda, a supposedly blasphemous film depicting a love affair between Tsar Nicholas II and a young ballerina.As one of only few investigative voices in the region, Mr Borodin often felt the brunt of official and criminal displeasure. Just two weeks ago, he was in intensive care with a major head injury. And in October, he was hit over the head with a metal pipe - that attack he linked to his work covering the Matilda protests.Police say there were no signs of forced entry into his apartment, and the door was locked from the inside. But friends and colleagues have said they are suspicious of the circumstances surrounding his death.Vyacheslav Bashkov, a local rights activist, told The Independent that Mr Borodin had called him early in the morning on 11 April. The journalist feared a police raid, said Mr Bashkov. A group of people in masks and fatigues had taken up positions in his courtyard, and he assumed he was the target"Any journalist engaged in dangerous work has a list of numbers to call should they find themselves in trouble, and Maxim had mine," said Mr Bashkov. "He thought I would be able to find him a lawyer."A little over an hour later, the journalist called back to say the men had disappeared, and there was no longer need for a lawyer.Mr Bashkov thought nothing more of it, until two days later, he read about Mr Borodin's condition.He immediately set off to the police station to give a statement, but there he was not met with an enthusiastic reception. "I left the station with the impression they wanted me out of there as soon as possible," he said.The editor of Novy Den (New Day), the newspaper for which Mr Borodin worked, said that the journalist had no motive for suicide. It looked like a "tragic accident", said Polina Rumyantseva - but she would "not stay quiet" if there was "a hint of foul play".Mr Bashkov insisted the most obvious explanation of the death was the journalist's professional activity."We have a chain of events that has led to a very suspicious death," he told The Independent. "The police should be doing everything in their powers to investigate - but they aren't."Police have said that they are not treating the death as suspicious.Oliver Carroll is the Moscow correspondent for The Independent. A founder editor of Russian Esquireand former Managing Editor of the Moscow Times, he has lived and reported on the post-Soviet space for over a decade. His work has been featured in Newsweek, Politico, The Times, Die Zeit, Foreign Policy, and many others.</s>A Russian investigative journalist who confirmed the deaths of Russian mercenaries in Syria has died after falling from his fifth-floor balcony in the city of Yekaterinburg.



Maksim Borodin, 32, was a reporter for the Yekaterinburg’s Novy Den website, gaining national attention for his reports on the Russian private military company Wagner, and local repute for his investigations into prisons and corrupt officials in his native Sverdlovsk region.

He told journalists in 2017 that he had been hit on the head with a metal pipe shortly after giving an interview on the controversial historical romantic drama, Matilda.

“His work was very dangerous,” Vyacheslav Bashkov, a local civil rights activist, told the Guardian by telephone on Monday. “He was one of the best.”

Police have not opened a criminal case into Borodin’s death, indicating they are treating it as a suicide or accident. But the editor-in-chief of Novy Den said its journalists would need access to Borodin’s apartment to assess if there had been foul play.

Polina Rumyantseva told the Guardian reporters from the paper had been in the apartment and did not see any signs of a struggle. It appeared to investigators, she said, that Borodin had gone on the balcony to smoke and had fallen.

“If there’s even a hint of something criminal, we will make it public,” Rumyantseva told Radio Svoboda.

Borodin’s death on Sunday has raised questions in Russia, where 38 journalists have been murdered since 1992, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Most of those cases remain unsolved.

“[The] death of journalist Maxim Borodin in #Russia is of serious concern. I call on the authorities for a swift and thorough investigation,” Harlem Désir, the representative on freedom of the media for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, posted on Twitter. His office said it would be releasing a statement on the case on Monday.

Bashkov, who said he’d worked with Borodin for more than a decade, said Borodin had called him two nights before his death at 5am saying there were men in camouflage and masks outside his building.



After trying to find a lawyer, Bashkov said Borodin called him back to say that the men had left and he must have been mistaken.</s>The journalist had been investigating the deaths of Russian private military contractors in a U.S.-led coalition airstrike in Syria on Feb. 7 and their funerals in March.

Maxim Borodin, 32, went into a coma after falling out of the building last Thursday and died from his injuries on Sunday. Authorities in the city of Yekaterinburg launched a pre-investigation probe, saying they are treating Borodin’s death as an accident.

A journalist investigating the deaths of Russian mercenaries in Syria has died after falling out of the window of his fifth-floor apartment last week.

Russian Fighters Killed in U.S. Airstrikes in Syria Identified

“There are no grounds for opening a case […] There are no signs that a crime was committed,” the state-run TASS news agency cited regional investigators as saying Monday.

Polina Rumyantseva, editor at the Yekaterinburg-based Ria Novy Den news agency, was quoted by The Financial Times as saying that his death “looks like a terrible accident.”

She told the MBKh news website that there had been no indication that Borodin exhibited suicidal tendencies.

Nevertheless, reports about two separate social media posts by the investigative journalist’s acquaintances compounded the suspicious circumstances of his death.

According to the OVD-Info police monitoring website, one of Borodin’s acquaintances wrote that the journalist called him in search of a lawyer two days before his accident, saying “people in camouflage and masks” were standing outside of his apartment.

Another acquaintance cited by OVD-Info recounted Borodin being hospitalized on April 5 after being attacked outside his home.

Regional media reported in October 2017 that Borodin was attacked over the head with a steel pipe.

Harlem Désir, the OSCE’s media freedom representative, called on Russian authorities “for a swift and thorough investigation” of Borodin’s death.</s>Maksim Borodin, 32, who worked for news agency Novy Den (New Day), failed to regain consciousness and died from injuries sustained in the fall on Sunday (April 15), three days after the incident.

Amid the ensuing investigation, Borodin’s editor-in-chief, Polina Rumyantseva, said she didn’t believe the reporter tried to take his own life, RFE/RL reported.

Police are treating his death as a suicide. A Sverdlovsk Oblast police spokesman said his Yekaterinburg apartment was locked from the inside and there was no sign of forced entry. But officers had not yet recovered a suicide note.

Borodin regularly published stories on crime and corruption. His latest articles concerned electoral fraud, and the deaths of Russian mercenaries in Syria amid escalating bombing campaigns in the region.

His friend Vyacheslav Bashkov described talking to the reporter hours before his fall in a post on Facebook. He said the journalist called him Wednesday in a state of distress at five in the morning, saying armed men wearing masks and camouflaged uniforms were on his balcony and had surrounded his apartment.

“Maxim was of the opinion that very shortly they will break in. But for the time being, it looked like they were waiting for permission from the court. So therefore he needed a lawyer, which is why he called me.

“His voice was worried but not hysterical, he wasn’t drunk, so I took everything seriously and promised to call who I could and then report back to him."

Bashkov went on to say that Borodin called him back an hour later to apologise, saying he made a mistake and the security officials might have been conducting a drill. But within hours, he was dead.

“I might be the last person he spoke to,” Bashkov said.

In another Facebook post, Alexei Navalny’s electoral campaign manager Leonid Volkov, who said he was a friend of Borodin, poured doubt on theories that he may have been murdered, saying he was struggling to progress in his career and might have intentionally leapt over his balcony while drunk.

Borodin's funeral arrangements were announced Monday on Novy Den. Friends and colleagues have been invited to attend the ceremony on Wednesday.</s>A Russian investigative journalist, who recently wrote about the deaths of Russian mercenaries in Syria, has died after falling from his 50th-floor balcony in the city of Yekaterinburg.

Maxim Borodin, 32, was found badly injured on the pavement under his balcony and taken to a hospital, where he died Sunday, according to his employer, the news website Novy Den (New Day).

Local police said they did not see any foul play, but his death prompted intense speculation among friends and colleagues.

Borodin's friend, Vyacheslav Bashkov, wrote on Facebook that Borodin contacted him early in the morning on Wednesday, the day before the fall, and told him that there was a man with a gun on his balcony, and that several others in masks and camouflage clothing were lurking in the stairwell leading to his apartment building.

Bashkov said that Borodin had called back an hour later and said he had been mistaken and that he thought the armed men were probably taking part in a training exercise.

Borodin regularly covered high-profile corruption cases and crime in Russia. In February, he broke a story about Russian mercenaries who died in an armed confrontation with U.S. forces near Deir-Ezzor, Syria.

Last year, he gave an interview to a Russian independent channel TV Rain and talked about the controversial film Matilda, then was subsequently hit on the head by an unknown assailant with a metal pipe.

Russia ranks first on the European Federation of Journalists list of countries with the highest number of journalists murdered in Europe.

Since 1992, 38 journalists have been murdered in Russia, according to the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists. Most of those cases remain unsolved.</s>The death of a journalist who wrote about Russian mercenaries in Syria is being described as a cause of "serious concern".

News website Novy Den said its reporter Maxim Borodin died in hospital on Sunday after falling from his fifth-floor balcony in Yekaterinburg, east of the Ural mountains, on Thursday.

Mr Borodin wrote last month about the death of people said to be Russian mercenaries. It is claimed they were from the Wagner Group, a private army Moscow is said to be using in Syria.

The Wagner Group is believed to be bankrolled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was indicted in the United States in February on charges of funding a 'troll factory' that tried to influence the 2016 presidential election.

It is not clear why Mr Borodin fell, but news reports in Russia, citing police, said his apartment was locked from the inside.

In another report, local authorities said they were not treating the death as suspicious.

"There are no grounds for launching a case," the local investigative committee told the TASS news agency.

"Several versions are being considered, including that this was an unfortunate accident, but there is no sign a crime has been committed," it added.

But Harlem Desir, who talks about media freedom for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, said Borodin's death was "of serious concern".

"I call on the authorities for a swift and thorough investigation," he tweeted.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, there is a disturbing record in Russia of attacks on reporters, with 58 killed since 1992.</s>A Russian journalist who had reported recently on clandestine Russian paramilitary groups in Syria died Sunday after falling from the balcony of his fifth-floor apartment in Yekaterinburg, authorities there said.

The journalist, Maksim Borodin (32) was hospitalised in a coma after he was found sprawled out below his balcony in the city’s Kirov district on Thursday, according to New Day, the local news agency where he had worked. On Sunday morning, he died.

Investigators summoned to the scene had found the door to his apartment locked from the inside, a police spokesman, Valery Gorelykh, told the local E1 news agency. “Those facts suggest that no one left the apartment and that there were probably no strangers there,” he said.

While police are still investigating Mr Borodin’s death, it is not being treated as suspicious, Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement. Yet in a country where opposition activists and muckraking journalists are routinely attacked and sometimes killed in connection with their work, that assertion was met with derision in some quarters. The doubters pointed to a telephone call Borodin made the day before he fell.

In the call early Wednesday, he told a friend, Vyacheslav Bashkov, that there was a man with a gun on his balcony, and that several others in masks and camouflage clothing were lurking in the stairwell leading to his apartment. In an interview, Mr Bashkov said Mr Borodin had called back an hour later and said he had been mistaken and that he thought the armed men were probably taking part in a training exercise.

Around the same time, Mr Borodin reached out to another friend, Yulia Fedotova, about the armed men surrounding his apartment. But in a telephone interview, Ms Fedotova urged caution about assigning blame for his death.

“Let’s switch on our logic here,” she said. “Why would someone break into his apartment in broad daylight and throw him off his balcony? Even if some serious people wanted him dead, they would know that a person can survive such a fall.”

Mr Borodin was known as an intrepid reporter who sought out politically sensitive topics. To take one example, he wrote last summer about efforts by radical Orthodox Christian activists in Yekaterinburg to thwart the release of Matilda, a Russian movie about Nicholas II that stoked a culture war in Russia.

In February and March, New Day published several dispatches by Mr Borodin from the town of Asbest, home to several men who had left for Syria to fight in the ranks of the Wagner Group, a secretive paramilitary organisation with murky ties to the Kremlin that suffered dozens of fatalities after an attack on US forces in Syria in February.

Several news outlets, including CBS and the New Yorker, have reported that the Wagner Group has ties to Yevgeny V Prigozhin, an oligarch nicknamed “Putin’s chef,” who was indicted in February by the special counsel investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 US election. The indictment says Prigozhin oversaw a sprawling troll factory that waged “information warfare against the United States.”

Borodin interviewed relatives and military superiors of the fighters of the Wagner Group, and attended their funerals in Asbest. His own funeral is scheduled for Wednesday. –Agencies</s>Maxim Borodin fell from his fifth-floor apartment and died Sunday, according to a statement released by his employer, Novy Den (New Day). Local police said they did not see any foul play, but his death prompted intense speculation among friends and colleagues.

Valery Gorelykh, spokesman for the Interior Ministry for the Sverdlovsk region, told CNN that Borodin's apartment was locked from the inside, a fact that he said indicated "no one exited the apartment and most likely there were no strangers in there."

Russia's Investigative Committee, the country's main investigative body, said there were no indications of a crime, and that multiple causes of death were being probed. Polina Rumyantseva, editor in chief of Novy Den, said that there was no reason to suspect suicide.

"We were able to visit the apartment of Maxim, together with the police and forensic experts on Friday, the intermediate conclusion is that Maxim fell out of the balcony of his apartment where he probably was smoking," she said. "As Maxim had big plans for his personal life and career, there is nothing to support a verdict of suicide."

Others fear his death may not have been accidental. Borodin's friend, Vyacheslav Bashkov, wrote on Facebook that Borodin contacted him early in the morning on April 11 and said his building was surrounded by armed "siloviki," or Russian security services, wearing camouflage and face masks. According to Bashkov, Borodin believed his apartment was about to be searched and that the security officers were waiting for a court order. Bashkov said the reporter asked to find him a lawyer, but an hour later Borodin called back and said it was a false alarm. Leonid Volkov, another acquaintance of Borodin who was head of Yekaterinburg headquarters for Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, cast doubt on the reports of a mysterious death. But he also suggested that the journalist most likely committed suicide out of desperation: Volkov said that Borodin wanted to move to Moscow, hoping to find an outlet that would give him more freedom to write. "This story is not about how the regime kills one journalist who writes on inconvenient topics," Volkov wrote on Facebook. "This is the story of how the regime kills thousands of journalists, all of them embodied [in Borodin], depriving them of any prospect, forcing them to choose between honor and a piece of bread every day." Borodin regularly covered high-profile corruption cases and crime in Russia. In February, he broke a story about Russian mercenaries who died in an armed confrontation with US forces near Deir-Ezzor, Syria. Borodin wrote about three members of Wagner, a private military company linked to pro-Putin oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin. Prigozhin, who is under US sanctions, is alleged to have made a systematic effort to silence reports of his activities Borodin was previously targeted for his views. Last year, he gave an interview to a Russian independent channel TV Rain and talked about the controversial film "Matilda," and was subsequently hit on the head by an unknown assailant with a metal pipe, according to a Facebook post. Russia ranks first in the European Federation of Journalists list of countries with the highest number of journalists murdered in Europe. Since 1990, 346 journalists and media staff have been killed in Europe, and a third lost their lives in Russia. In a statement on Twitter, Harlem Désir, the media freedom representative for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, an intergovernmental body, expressed "serious concern" about Borodin's death. "I call on the authorities for a swift and thorough investigation," he said.
Russian investigative journalist Maxim Borodin falls from a window in Yekaterinburg and dies. Local officials say the death is non-suspicious but Novy Dens chief editor and international monitor OSCE both say he may have been murdered.