Russian doctors falling from windows
Hospital workers mysteriously fall out of windows amid the coronavirus pandemic
Hello, friends! Welcome back to another edition of “From Russia With Mila.”
In the latest pandemic news, three Russian doctors who were treating coronavirus patients fall (two to their deaths, while one remains in serious condition) from hospital windows. Pretty strange, yeah? Well, let’s dive deeper.
A bit of background on the doctors who fell
It is rare for doctors to fall from windows in Russia, but Shulepov was the third health worker to fall out of a window in the country in the past two weeks. (CNN)
Yeah, I don’t think doctors falling from windows is the epitome of normal, especially when three fall out of windows in the span of two weeks — two weeks in the middle of a worldwide pandemic that has led to disinformation and protesting and fear and uncertainty.
The three coronavirus-treating doctors who fell seem to have some other things in common: They had complained about personal protective equipment (PPE) shortages or difficult working conditions or had been diagnosed themselves with coronavirus shortly before falling out of windows …and each fall is just as puzzling as the next:
Alexander Shulepov, 37, is the one doctor who survived the fall (currently in critical condition with a fractured skull). He is an ambulance doctor in the Voronezh region, and on April 22, he posted a video on the Russian social media site VK, complaining about shortages of medical supplies and being forced to work even after he tested positive. (BuzzFeed)
But Shulepov retracted his statement three days later, amid suspicions that he was threatened to do so, saying in another video that he was in “an emotional state” when he made his initial claim. (BuzzFeed)
Ten days later, he became the third Russian doctor to fall from a hospital window in two weeks. (Meduza)
Alexander Kosyakin, the man who appears with Shulepov in the initial video posted on social media, told CNN that the fall was very suspicious.
“He felt fine, he was getting ready to get discharged from the hospital,” Kosyakin said. “And all of a sudden this happened, it’s not clear why and what for, so many questions that I don’t even have the answer to.” (CNN)
Interestingly enough, Kosyakin himself had “previously criticized hospital administration for protective gear shortages on his social media and was questioned by the police for allegedly spreading fake news,” according to CNN.
Yelena Nepomnyashchaya, 47, a doctor in Krasnoyarsk, fell to her death from her fifth-floor office window on April 25. According to BuzzFeed, Nepomnyashchaya “had just finished talking on a conference call with the regional health minister about turning one of her hospital buildings into a ward to treat coronavirus patients when she fell.” She was reportedly “strongly against” the idea, citing PPE equipment shortages.
Natalya Lebedeva, 48, was the chief of the ambulance center in Zvyozdny. Like Shulepov, she had also been diagnosed with coronavirus. A Moscow hospital statement says she died “as a result of an accident,” according to BuzzFeed.
In interviews with some Russian news outlets (Moskovsky, Komsomolets, REN TV), her colleagues say she fell from a window and that she “may have killed herself after accusations from her superiors that she had infected several of her colleagues with the coronavirus,” but police have not confirmed these reports. (BuzzFeed)
Mysteriously falling out of windows in Russia is not a problem unique to hospital workers.
An eye-raising number of Russian journalists have also fallen out of windows (NPR) — as well as Nikolai Gorokhov, a lawyer who was probing corruption (NBC News). Gorokhov, who recovered from the 2017 fall off his balcony, told NBC that it was “no accident.”
Here he is talking to NBC on that very balcony:
So, while on the topic of “falling” out of windows, let’s dissect the history of executions by defenestration.
A bit of history of defenestrations
This news of people being thrown out of windows is reminiscent of the defenestrations of Prague, referring to three incidents in the history of Bohemia when people were, well, defenestrated. The 1618 defenestration in particular triggered the religious conflict that was the Thirty Years’ War. (More on this can be found here.)
Now, there is a fourth possible defenestration that took place in 1948, but that’s still up for debate.
Jan Masaryk, the foreign minister of Czechoslovakia in the 1940s and son of the country’s founder/first president, was found dead outside of a bathroom window on March 10, 1948. The case has never really been resolved, but some say a “‘partisan’ commando sent in by the Soviet secret service” murdered him. (Radio Prague)
In 2004, forensic evidence in a Prague police report apparently suggested that Masaryk had been pushed out of the window, changing the official cause of death from suicide to murder. In 2006, a Russian journalist corroborated that claim with knowledge he had via his mother, who had worked as a Soviet spy in Central Europe.
Stay safe and healthy. And as always, reach out with any questions or comments, connect on Twitter for the latest, and stop back for more on media and Eastern Europe!
— Мила (Mila)