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. “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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
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.