Russian scientist who developed Covid vaccine 'strangled to death with a belt'
A murder investigation has been launched after a Russian scientist involved in developing the Sputnik Covid vaccine was found dead.
Andrey Botikov was part of a team of 18 scientists who developed the coronavirus vaccine in 2020.
He was found strangled to death with a belt in his Moscow apartment.
It has been reported that an intruder broke into his home and started arguing with him about money.
A 29-year-old man has since been arrested and charged with murder after the Investigative Committee of Russia claimed to have caught the suspect “the shortest possible time” as he fled the scene.
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Botikov helped to develop the Sputnik V Covid vaccine (POOL/AFP via Getty Images)The Daily Mail reports that the defendant, who has already been prosecuted in relation to another “serious” crime, confessed to the killing during an interrogation.
Reports in the Russian media named the suspect as Alexei Z and said he had served a 10-year prison sentence for providing sex services.
Botikov, who worked at the Russian State Collection of Viruses D.I. Ivanovsky Institute of Virology before becoming a senior researcher at the National Research Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology, was awarded an Order of Merit for the Fatherland for his work on the vaccine.
Sputnik was the first registered combination vector vaccine against Covid-19.
Botikov is among a number of prominent members of Russian society to be found dead recently.
Last month General Vladimir Makarov was found having apparently shot himself in a suicide at his home.
In December, sausage tycoon Pavel Antov – a critic of the war in Ukraine - was found dead after falling out of the window of a hotel in India.
An image shared by the Investigative Committee of Russia after the virologist was killed (telegra)And last week Vladimir Putin's former spin doctor, who turned into one of his biggest critics, died in Moscow.
Gleb Pavlovsky is understood to have suffered a stroke died “after a long and serious illness" in a hospice following treatment in the capital's Botkin hospital.
The 71-year-old had issued warnings against the war and questioned the dictator’s state of mind.
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Pavlovsky was fired in 2011 after he warned against power-hungry Vladimir Putin’s return to the Kremlin for a third term and was also involved in Viktor Yanukovych's failed 2004 presidential campaign in Ukraine.
On the invasion of Ukraine, Pavlovsky said: "The previous Putin would not have done this. He was a very sane-thinking person.
“But this has all vanished now. He has an obsession with Ukraine that he didn't previously have. He is reacting now to the pictures in his own head.”
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