The former spin doctor-turned-critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin passed away at the age of 71 in a Moscow hospice following a protracted illness, according to his family.
Gleb Pavlovsky, a former Soviet dissident who spent 15 years working for the Kremlin before losing favour in 2011, passed away on Sunday, according to his family’s Telegram account. Pavlovsky helped Putin bolster his image as a strongman.
“Relatives and friends of Gleb Pavlovsky express their deep gratitude to everyone who supported and helped all these months, went through all of this with us, endured, understood and protected,” the announcement said.
The illness of Pavlovsky remained a mystery, and there was no word on funeral plans.
Born in the Black Sea port of Odessa, Pavlovsky got involved in rebellious activities when he was a university student.
He was charged with crimes, entered a guilty plea, and testified against some of his coworkers in 1982. Some members of the dissident movement have never forgiven him for this action.
After serving a three-year internal exile sentence, Pavlovsky returned to Moscow and enlisted in the pro-democracy movement that Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms had sparked.
He started working as a political consultant after the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991. In 1996, he assisted Boris Yeltsin in staging a successful re-election campaign.
Pavlovsky assisted in securing Putin’s first election in March 2000 after Yeltsin resigned.
Up until he was fired as a presidential adviser in 2011, he kept consulting the Kremlin.
Beginning with a condemnation of the Kremlin’s efforts to impose greater control over Russia’s political landscape, including a crackdown on the opposition and independent media, Pavlovsky began to criticise them.
Additionally, he vehemently denounced Putin’s choice to send troops into Ukraine more than a year prior.
Pavlovsky was hailed as “one of the most eloquent voices on the machinations and intrigue taking place in the halls of power” by the English-language Moscow Times.
He is the most recent in a string of notable Russian officials and businessmen who have perished since the war began.
A high-ranking defence official in the conflict with Ukraine named Marina Yankina, 58, was discovered dead earlier this month after tumbling from a window of an apartment building in St. Petersburg.
She reportedly killed herself, according to reports.
Maj. Gen. Vladimir Makarov, 72, of the Russian Ministry of the Interior, died in a Moscow suburb this month as well.
Col. Vadim Boiko, 44, the deputy head of the Makarov Pacific Higher Naval School in Vladivostok, was discovered dead from multiple gunshot wounds towards the end of last year; his death was also ruled a suicide.
