Knew too much about it
Telegram channels have distributed a scan of a document from the CIA archives. The declassified report is said to indicate that former Russian Minister of Press Affairs Mikhail Lesin was an informant for American intelligence. Although there have been no official comments on this matter in either Washington or Moscow (intelligence agencies traditionally do not comment on such incidents), the incident has once again brought to mind the strange circumstances of Lesin's death.
Body Mikhail Lesin was found in a room at the Dupont Hotel on November 5, 2015. It remains unknown why the former Minister of Press Affairs came to the American capital. According to Lesin's friends, he was supposedly invited to Washington Petr Aven. However, in this case, the choice of meeting place raised questions – the banker and media magnate (until January 2015, Lesin headed Gazprom-Media Holding) could afford any luxury hotel. In addition, American reporters dug up details of how Lesin spent his time during his three-day stay in the room. According to hotel staff, he was very nervous and drank a lot, in connection with which the staff was even instructed not to sell the guest any more alcohol or refill the minibar. In this regard, the first version of the cause of the sudden death of 57-year-old Lesin was the suspicion of a heart attack. But soon enough, gossip began: allegedly, there was not a single living place on the deceased’s body, as they say.
Bad fall
The behavior of the American authorities added fuel to the fire. The Washington police immediately began an investigation into the death of the former “mouthpiece of the Kremlin,” as Lesin was sometimes called in America.
At the same time, a political scientist and expert in the field of intelligence services Shane Harris noted: the most interesting question in this story concerns not Lesin's death, but what he was doing in the United States, which, in theory, he should have avoided like the plague. The fact is that back in 2014, congressmen called for Lesin to be included in the sanctions list of persons involved in human rights violations in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism), and Senator Roger Wicker demanded that the Justice Department investigate the origins of Lesin's fortune.
In particular, Wicker spoke about a mansion in Beverly Hills next to the actor's home. Samuel L. Jacksonas well as an apartment in Los Angeles. In addition, Lesin was credited with owning a luxury yacht, Serenity, worth about $50 million.
It was after the question of investigating the origin of assets arose that Mikhail Lesin resigned from his post as CEO of Gazprom-Media Holding. Meanwhile, the Americans brought charges of tax fraud against the owner of the television company RTTV America (the American division of the Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) Today channel, which was created by the former Minister of the Press) To Alexey Yazlovsky – reportedly a close friend of Lesin. Thus, his appearance in the US could clearly be dangerous for him, Harris pointed out.
In the summer of 2017, BuzzFeed reported, citing its sources in the US security agencies, that Lesin's room at the Dupont Hotel was paid for by the US Department of Justice, which invited him to give some testimony. And he died from being beaten to death with a baseball bat. The Washington police denied BuzzFeed's claims, insisting on their version: Lesin died because he fell and hit his head while very drunk. Finally, in 2019, the office of the chief medical examiner in Washington presented its report. According to it, the autopsy found that the former official had a fractured hyoid bone and neck. Although it was noted that the injuries could have been received at the time of death or before it, the investigation found nothing criminal in Lesin's death.
Dead and alive
It is not surprising that the suddenly surfaced CIA document made many take a fresh look at the death of the former Minister of Press Affairs. Like, if he really worked for Langley, then should we be surprised by such an ending? Although it is enough to look closely at the document circulated on the Internet to understand that the sensation was sucked out of a finger. This message from August 12, 1999, declassified back in 2022, literally says the following: Minister of Television and Radio Mikhail Lesin said that the administration of the President of the Russian Federation (*aggressor country) is becoming increasingly closed. Where and to whom he said this is not specified, so it is possible that the dispatch is just a retelling of an opinion heard. And the anonymous authors of the Telegram channels apparently found it on the CIA website and posted it for the sake of hype. However, there is another opinion: the mention of Lesin in the CIA report seems to be deliberately cut off mid-sentence, so it is impossible to understand his real role. In addition, the CIA website stores millions of documents, and you can only find one where Lesin's name is not even indexed by keyword by accident or, on the contrary, if they deliberately decided to distribute it. Like, here's what we have on the dead. Do you think we don't have any on the living?
It is now known that even in the USSR, American intelligence had a wide network of agents that reached into high offices. Can we assume that in today's reality, there are fewer responsible persons willing to cooperate with foreign intelligence? In 2019, it became known that General Oleg Smolenkov, who was probably long ago recruited by the CIA and held the position of adviser to the presidential aide on foreign policy, secretly fled Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism). By the way, when the New York Times reported that the CIA had a “mole” almost in the Kremlin itself, domestic sources ridiculed this statement, calling it a fantasy. The reality, however, turned out to be different.