Gaidar Dies

“Yegor Gaidar, one of the architects of Russia’s ‘shock therapy’ transition from Communism to capitalism, has died aged just 53. The former Prime Minister was found dead at his home in Moscow’s Odintsovo district this morning. Interfax news quoted police sources saying that he appeared to have suffered a blood clot. Mr Gaidar was the focus of a bizarre controversy in November 2006, when he was suddenly rushed to hospital in Ireland just a day after the dissident former spy Alexander Litvinkenko died in London of radiation poisoning. Mr Gaidar collapsed, vomiting blood, and claimed that he too had been a victim of poisoning. He said that he had been unable to move his hands and feet, but by the next day he was well enough to return to Moscow, where he said that his doctor could not explain ‘large-scale and systemic changes’ to his body. Mr Gaidar accused enemies of the Kremlin of attempting to kill him, arguing that ‘after the death of Alexander Litvinenko…another violent death of a famous Russian on the following day is the last thing that the Russian authorities would want’.”