A former close aide to Russian president Vladimir Putin of Russia who was found dead in a hotel room in November died of blunt force injuries to the head, the chief medical examiner’s office here said on Thursday.
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Police in Washington say they have an active investigation into the death of Lesin, an influential media executive who until early 2015 ran Russia’s largest media holding, Gazprom-Media.
Before Thursday’s announcement initial reports were suggesting that the man responsible for the creation of the media network Russia Today suffered a fatal heart attack in his room at the Dupont Circle Hotel.
The findings contradict Russian state media reports, which said, citing Lesin’s family, that the former minister of media affairs died of a heart attack.
‘No additional details were provided by the main medical examiner in the postmortem evaluation.
Mr Lesin’s case is still under investigation, said the DC police department’s chief spokesperson, Dustin Sternbeck.
He declined to say whether the post-mortem results meant a crime may have been committed.
Following the revelations from the USA authorities, Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova complained on Facebook that numerous calls from the Russian embassy in Washington enquiring into the circumstances of Mr Lesin’s death had not been answered.
District of Columbia police spokesman Officer Hugh Carew confirmed the autopsy results show the cause of Lesin’s death was blunt force trauma to the head, but the manner of death was undetermined.
Sternbeck and the medical examiner’s office could not immediately be reached for comment. “We’re awaiting explanations and official information from Washington concerning the progress of the investigation”.
The death of Lesin had prompted no shortage of speculation in the U.S. and in Russian Federation in recent months. In 1999, he was named Russian media minister and played a key role Putin’s first election campaign.
In 2004 he was named Mr Putin’s adviser, and the following year oversaw the launch of Russia Today, now known as RT, a state-controlled channel meant to reach global audience.
” D.C. police said only that a body was found before noon on an upper floor of a hotel in the 1500 block of New Hampshire Avenue in Northwest.
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Lesin resigned a year later, citing family reasons.
