A PRO-Putin MP dubbed Russia’s "Gas Wonderkid" is the latest senior energy industry exec to die since the start of the war in Ukraine. 

Multimillionaire Nikolay Petrunin, 47, entered politics after a career building gas pipelines in Siberia.

His death comes after at least nine oligarchs were feared murdered after dying in suspicious circumstances this year.

Dad of three Petrunin had been in a coma for a month with complications linked to severe Covid, according to unconfirmed reports.

His death was confirmed by colleagues in the Russian parliament.

Vyacheslav Volodin, chairman of the State Duma, said: “Nikolai Petrunin was a professional and responsible person, he was respected by his colleagues, and voters trusted him.”

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Putin loyalist Petrunin was known as a “political prodigy” who was deputy chairman of the Duma’s powerful energy committee.

He was formerly a top gas industry executive whose firm built pipelines for major Russian energy operators.

He had links to state-owned Gazprom – now starving the West of gas supplies over the war – and oil giant Rosneft.

Petrunin, who declared an annual salary of £1.75million, also had businesses linked to beer and tourism.

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He had been an MP in the Tula region since 2016, and was married to Albina Petrunina who is also a prominent figure in her own right.

The former police major is co-owner of a firm called MetaTrendCity along with influential Gazprom manager Vladimir Vasiliev.

This week it emerged a leading "independent minded" judge was killed in his car near the epicentre of the Crimea Bridge blast.

Sergey Maslov, 42, had overseen sensitive cases involving energy Gazprom and the Moscow city government.

There has been a spate of mysterious deaths associated with energy companies and other industries since the start of the war in Ukraine.

Last month we told how an executive at Russia's state rail company was found shot dead on the balcony of his Moscow apartment.

Pavel Pchelnikov, 52, was a former Putin ally turned war critic.

A week earlier a top aviation expert died after "falling down several flights of stairs".

Anatoly Gerashchenko, 73, was a former close ally of Vladimir Putin before a rumoured falling out.

Another crony died after "falling out of a boat" in the Sea of Japan near Vladivostok.

High-flyer Ivan Pechorin, 39, was Putin's point man for developing Russia's vast resources in the Arctic.

Mystery plunge

Oil tycoon Ravil Maganov, 67, mysteriously fell to his death from the sixth floor window of a Moscow hospital on September 1.

He was the chairman of Lukoil, Russia’s second largest oil company, which had openly criticised Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

One report claimed he was “beaten” before his fatal plunge.

Lukoil said he died as a result of a "serious illness".

Strangely, Putin arrived soon after Maganov’s body was found to pay his respects to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who had died at the same hospital. 

In July, Yuri Voronov, 61, head of a transport firm linked to Gazprom, was found dead in his swimming pool.

A friend who is a top criminologist warned of foul play.

Billionaire Alexander Subbotin, 43, a top manager at Lukoil and shipping company owner, was found dead in May.

One theory claimed he was poisoned by toad venom triggering a heart attack after “taking advice from shamans”.

In April Sergey Protosenya, 55, was found dead by hanging in Spain.

His wife and teenage daughter had been hacked to death in their beds at a luxury villa.

Protosenya, said to be worth £333million, was a former deputy chairman of Novotek, a company closely linked to the Kremlin.

Days earlier Vladislav Avayev, 51, an ex-vice-president of Gazprombank and a former Kremlin official, was found shot dead in his elite Moscow penthouse.

There were claims he had access to the financial secrets of the Kremlin elite.

And in March, the body of Russian billionaire Vasily Melnikov was found with stab wounds in his luxury apartment in Nizhny Novgorod.

Two more Gazprom-linked executives died in luxury homes near St Petersburg in February.

Alexander Tyulakov, 61, a senior Gazprom finance and security official, was found dead by his lover the day after the war started.

His neck was in a noose in his £500,000 home.

Reports claimed he had been badly beaten shortly before he “took his own life”, leading to speculation he was under intense pressure.

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Three weeks earlier, Leonid Shulman, head of transport at Gazprom Invest, was found dead in a pool of blood on his bathroom floor at the same elite gated housing development.

He had reportedly been stabbed several times.

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