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On Christmas Eve, the Russian media reported the last mysterious death for the time being, which joins a long list of similar incidents in the past year. Alexander Busakov, director general of the Admiralty Shipyard in Petersburg, died "before his time" and under "tragic" circumstances, according to official sources. Before him, a dozen other prominent business people died – a striking number of them from the defense industry.

As is so often the case in Vladimir Putin's empire, we will probably never know the true course of events. But much speaks for the same background in most of these cases: In Russia, a new bloody struggle for the distribution of enormous wealth is raging.

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