A Russian war journalist has been found dead after vowing to expose ‘gigantic corruption’ in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol which was flattened by Russian forces.
The body of Alexander Rybin, 39, was discovered by a roadside near Shakhty, in Russia’s s Rostov region, on Saturday, Meduza reported.
He is the latest in a series of mysterious media-linked deaths amid the Russian President Vladimir Putin against Ukraine.
Rybin died after a visit to occupied Mariupol in which his on-air report criticized the Kremlin for its slowness in rebuilding the decimated city.
He said he would uncover some bombshells about Moscow’s “reconstruction” efforts of the Ukrainian city it flattened.
The journalist, who had backed Putin’s annexation of the Donbas region of Ukraine, said there was an influx of immigrants to undertake the reconstruction and huge money pumped in from Russia, the Daily Mail reported.
But he blasted the ‘gigantic corruption’, and promised to reveal more details in a live broadcast on news platform Rabkor after returning to Moscow.
He never arrived.
Instead, he was found dead on a highway near the city of Shakhty, some 180 kilometers from Mariupol.
“What happened to him is unknown. And perhaps we will never know the whole truth about this story. Sudden death from natural causes? Sasha did not give the impression of being sick and never complained about his health. And if he was killed, then who did it, why and how?” Rabkor wrote announcing his death.
Mariupol was once home to 400,000 people before it was razed by Russia’s forces who lay siege to shortly after Putin’s 2022 invasion.
It made headlines after Russian bombed a maternity hospital and a theater sheltering hundreds of civilians. Thousands are thought to have been killed there.
Rybin reported from Mariupol at the end of last year. Officially, his cause of death was given as ‘cardiomyopathy’, according to the Russian state media.
He reported for a number of Russian media from the Middle East, the U.S., Turkey, Ethiopia, Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and other countries.
Before that, he fought among pro-Russian forces in Ukraine’s Luhansk region during the first wave of the Kremlin’s war in 2014.
On December 30 he told viewers from Mariupol: ‘There is gigantic money here, there are gigantic opportunities for corruption.
‘My personal impression – I’m not accusing anybody of anything… is that there is a gigantic corruption going on in Mariupol, which the Russian army occupied with heavy fighting in Spring 2022.
Ukrainian media outlet Obozrevatel cited a Russian source as saying: ‘The last time he spoke on the air was on December 30 from Mariupol.
‘During it, he said that there was no New Year’s mood in the city after the shelling, and also suggested corruption in the construction sector.
‘In addition, he wished Russians a change of government.’
On Sunday, it was reported that the corpse of Zoya Konovalova, 48, chief editor of Russian state TV company Kuban, operating in Krasnodar region close to the war zone, was discovered in her bedroom.
She and her ex-husband – whose body was also found at the scene – had died from ‘poisoning’, said law enforcement.
In December, 35-year-old deputy editor-in-chief of Putin’s favorite newspaper was found dead in Moscow. Anna Tsareva’s body was discovered at her home in the capital and an investigation is underway.
