Mikhail Lesin, who served as information minister under Putin and advised the president on media policies, ran one of Russia’s biggest media operations, Gazprom Media, until December 2014. Russian media had reported that Lesin suffered a heart attack, citing relatives.
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‘No additional details were provided by the main medical examiner in the postmortem evaluation.
Russian authorities expect that the United States will provide them with official data on the cause of death of former Russian press minister Mikhail Lesin, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday.
He declined to say whether the post-mortem results meant a crime may have been committed.
“The Russian embassy in the United States has repeatedly requested through diplomatic channels [updates] concerning the investigation into the death of a Russian citizen”, spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement. He became a presidential media adviser in 2004 and he resigned from the post in 2009.
For months, Mr Lesin’s fate has been the subject of much speculation.
Known as a tough and ambitious political operator, Lesin broke the stranglehold of the oligarchs on Russian media and ushered in the era in which the Kremlin controlled all major television stations.
President Vladimir Putin pressed North Korea on Friday to forge a new Asia-Europe freight route by extending Russia’s trans-Siberian railway across the Korean peninsula to bypass China. He is credited with having inspired the creation of Russia Today, an English-language news service that is often seen as a mouthpiece for the Russian government.
The Russian Embassy in Washington DC says it will file a request with USA authorities to receive more information in regards to circumstances of Lesin’s death, reported Sputnik. Early efforts in Russian Federation to describe the cause of death as a heart attack added to the suspicions – and so did reports that Lesin might somehow have been compromised by money-laundering allegations raised by a USA senator who claimed Lesin had “bought homes worth a total of $28 [million] in Los Angeles and moved his immediate family there”, as The Financial Times reported.
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The autopsy was completed this week and results released initially to Lesin’s family and then to the media, she said.
