Prominent Russian journalist Grigory Nekhoroshev (69), who first revealed President Vladimir Putin’s relationship with Olympic gymnast Alina Kabayeva, is dead. Nekhoroshev died under suspicious circumstances in the Latvian capital Riga, after eating poisonous mushrooms.
Grigory Nekhoroshev died last Friday at the age of 69 in Riga, the capital of Latvia. He had lived there in exile for eleven years as a political refugee. The Baltic news site reports this Delphi and the Latvian News website Press.lvafter which the news also reached the British press.
Known enemy of Putin
Friends of the Russian say he died after eating mushrooms he found in his garden. Although he was known as a mushroom lover, many still question his death.
For those who don’t know him: Grigory Nekhoroshev is a known enemy of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In 2008 he resigned as editor-in-chief of the newspaper Moskovsky Korrespondent a strict taboo by publishing about the private life of the Russian head of state.
Secret friend Alina Kabayeva
The newspaper revealed the rumor that former Olympic gymnastics champion Alina Kabayeva (43) is Putin’s (73) secret girlfriend. The newspaper wrote at the time that the Russian leader was planning to divorce his wife Lyudmila Putina and marry Kabayeva, who was thirty years younger.
Although the Kremlin has never confirmed the relationship and Putin has reacted with outright anger to the revelations, the consensus in international media and intelligence services remains strong to this day: Kabayeva is Putin’s secret girlfriend and the mother of at least two of his children.
Newspaper shut down in retaliation
Nekhoroshev stated afterwards that he had full confidence in his journalists, who had spent weeks checking the facts. He believed that the public had a right to know this kind of information about their leaders.
Just days after the revelation in 2008, retaliation followed: the newspaper Moskovsky Korrespondent was closed down. After several turbulent years in which the ex-editor-in-chief was interrogated several times by the Russian security service FSB and also temporarily fled the country, Nekhoroshev decided to leave Russia permanently in 2014, the year in which the political situation in Russia further hardened after the annexation of Crimea. He settled in Latvia, where he was given the status of political refugee.
‘He has always remained nervous’
And now he has died, reportedly after eating mushrooms from his own garden. Although he was a mushroom lover and connoisseur, the ones he ate turned out to be poisonous. The man’s friends say that Nekhoroshev has always remained ‘nervous’ in recent years. He was afraid of an attack by assassins on behalf of Putin.
LISTEN ALSO to our daily news podcast Talk to AD
WATCH ALSO to these news videos:
