A TOP Russian military commander fired by Vladimir Putin has suddenly died on Christmas Day.
Ukrainian-born Colonel-General Yuri Sadovenko, 56, was deputy defence minister when he was ousted by the tyrant in a sweeping Kremlin shake-up.
Russian state media reported today that Sadovenko died of “heart disease”, giving no further details.
There had been no earlier reports that he was ill.
Sadovenko was especially close to former defence minister Sergei Shoigu – now secretary of the Kremlin’s shadowy security council – acting as his trusted “gatekeeper”.
He was widely seen as a “keeper of secrets” in the defence ministry earlier in the war.
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Putin fired the general in May 2024 after removing Shoigu in a dramatic defence ministry purge.
Sadovenko was sanctioned by Britain and other Western states.
His death at just 56 adds to a growing list of sudden and unexplained deaths among Russia’s elite since shortly before the war began in February 2022.
His personal life had already exploded into scandal.
Sadovenko’s wife, Maria Kitaeva, 42, left him for another deputy defence minister, Timur Ivanov, 50, in a sex scandal that rocked Putin’s high command.
Putin later fired Ivanov, another Shoigu ally, who was then jailed for major corruption.
Sadovenko’s sudden death comes amid a grim wave of fatalities involving senior Russian officials, generals, oligarchs and propagandists.
In the past week alone, the death was confirmed of Lt-Col Stanislav ‘Spaniard’ Orlov, 44, who commanded Putin’s notorious football hooligan battalion that fought in Ukraine.
There are suspicions he was killed by Russian special services at his home in occupied Crimea.
Another senior figure killed this week was Lt-Gen Fanil Sarvarov, 56, who was blown up in a Ukrainian car bomb in Moscow.
Earlier this year, Lt-Col Buvaysar Saitiev, 49 – a former Putin MP and Olympic wrestling legend – died after plunging from a window in Moscow.
His widow said she believed the fall was an accident, though reports later indicated he suffered cardiac arrest.
In July, Putin’s transport minister Roman Starovoit, 53, was found dead just hours after being fired.
His death was officially ruled a suicide, but independent outlet SOTA later claimed “fresh traces of beatings were found” on his body.
The same day, another official, Andrey Korneichuk, 42, collapsed and died at the transport ministry, with state media citing possible “acute heart failure”.
Oil and energy bosses have also died in alarming numbers.
Lukoil tycoon Ravil Maganov, 67, fell from a window at Moscow’s elite Central Clinical Hospital in 2022. His successor Vladimir Nekrasov later died aged 66 of “acute heart failure”.
Lukoil vice-president Vitaly Robertus, 53, was found hanged in his office toilet in March 2024.
Transneft vice-president Andrey Badalov, 62, fell to his death from his luxury Moscow tower block this year.
Other deaths include former Yukos executive Mikhail Rogachev, 64, who fell from his tenth-floor apartment, defence official Marina Yankina, 58, who plunged 160ft in St Petersburg, and Russian senator Vladimir Lebedev, 60, who died suddenly in an unexplained “terrible tragedy”.
More recently, Putin propagandist Kirill Vyshinsky, 58, executive director of the Russia Today empire, died “suddenly” after what state media described as a “lengthy” or “serious” illness — despite no prior reports he was unwell.
Vyshinsky, who supported Putin’s invasion and sat on the tyrant’s so-called “human rights council”, had continued making regular radio appearances this summer.
Dozens of powerful figures have now died in falls from windows, sudden “heart failure”, apparent suicides or violent attacks.