Russian Journalist Working On Potential 'Scandal' Dies Of Suspicious Causes

Russian journalist Ivan Safronov, who died earlier this week after mysteriously falling out of a fifth-story window in his Moscow apartment building, was investigating Russian arms sales to Syria and Iran, and had told his newspaper, Kommersant "that he had 'received information' about the sale of Sukhoi-34 fighter jets to Syria and S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Iran via Belarus," and was preparing a story that might cause a major scandal. You can see where this is headed: while the government is terming the incident an "incitement to suicide," the Russian journalists' union and his newspaper think he was murdered. (In fact, yesterday Kommersant ran an article with the hed 'Ivan Safronov Was Killed,' which points out that the article he was working on "could have caused a major scandal." And of course, Russia is not a stranger to recent suspicious deaths.

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