Two bullets have been found in the body of a helicopter pilot who was carrying one of Vladimir Putin’s top prosecutors, it has been alleged.

Russia’s deputy prosecutor general Saak Karapetyan died on on Wednesday when his AS-350 came down in bad weather on a hunting trip 365 miles northeast of Moscow.

He has been linked to Moscow’s alleged offers of ‘dirt’ on Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump’s election campaign.

Saak Karapetyan, deputy general prosecutor was killed in the crash (Pictures: East2West News)

There are also claims he was a channel of leaks to British, US and Swiss secret services.


Karapetyan was in charge of Russian high-profile criminal probes into three major episodes in Britain – the poisoning of Sergei Skripal this year, the unexplained death of Putin foe Boris Berezovsky in 2013, and the polonium murder of dissident Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.



The shooting allegation is expected to increase speculation that the leading prosecutor was assassinated.

The official version is that the ‘overloaded’ helicopter crashed after clipping trees in Kostroma region, killing Karapetyan, his nephew Areg Arutyunyan, 47, pilot Stanislav Mikhnov, and another passenger Viktor Kopteev, 54.

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But respected Moscow journalist Sergei Dorenko has bluntly accused the investigating authorities of a cover-up in seeking to hide two bullet wounds to highly experienced 54 year old pilot – and gun shot damage to the copter’s blade.

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The claim that Mikhnov was shot immediately before the helicopter crash was made by Dorenko’s Govorit Moskva radio station and promptly denied by the Investigative Committee (IC) – in charge of probing serious crime.

Dorenko retorted: ‘We have the official version that the pilot mistakenly touched the trees and the helicopter fell to the ground.

‘But in fact I suppose that the pilot was good and did not touch any trees. He did not take off at all. He was shot with two bullets in the back before this.’

Karapetyan died along with his nephew Areg Arutyunyan, 47, pilot Stanislav Mikhnov, and another passenger Viktor Kopteev, 54 (Picture: East2West News)

The official version is that the ‘overloaded’ helicopter crashed after clipping trees in Kostroma region

This leaves the possibility that someone else was at the controls when the helicopter took off and crashed – or that it was destroyed on the ground, killing all on board.

Dorenko said: ‘The IC decided that there were no gunshots… So two 5.45 caliber bullets one of which broke through the pilot’s blade are not to be considered. Why?’

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He insisted: ‘There are two 5.45 bullets in the pilot…. the blade is also pierced.’

Investigative Committee spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko had insisted:: ‘The information is not true. None of those killed in the crash has any gunshot wounds.’

Reports say Karapetyan and his nephew Arutyunyan, 47, a senior customs official, were using the helicopter for a hunting trip.

respected Moscow journalist Sergei Dorenko has bluntly accused the investigating authorities of a cover-up (Picture: East2West News)

The pilot landed near village Vonyshevo due to atrocious weather and the pair ordered a car to come and collect them.

Then they randomly met a villager Kopteev, who offered to show them the route to take a short flight to meet the car.

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This is when the accident allegedly happened. Kopteev’s relative heard the cracking of branches and the sound of the impact.

In the wake of the crash, there were anonymous claims from a respected anonymous ‘Kremlin insider’ blogger nicknamed Nezygar suggesting that Karapetyan’s death will ‘resolve a number of very painful issues’ in the Russian government.



Among these ‘it will stop leaks of highly confidential information to the West’.

Reports say Karapetyan and his nephew Arutyunyan, 47, a senior customs official, were using the helicopter for a hunting trip (Picture: East2West News)

In particular Karapetyan’s death would prevent future passing of information to the secret services of Britain, the US and Switzerland, it was claimed.

Karapetyan reportedly had close links to the controversial Natalia Veselnitskaya, 43, a Russian lawyer seen as Moscow’s go-between with the Trump campaign on alleged Clinton ‘dirt’ garnered by Russian secret services.

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She met with Donald Trump Jr, Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner in Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign.

While ostensibly independent of the Russian government, Veselnitskaya led a pro-Moscow campaign to overturn anti-corruption laws targeting Russians passed after tax accountant Sergei Magnitsky was beaten to death in a Moscow prison in 2009 while working to expose a $230million fraud scheme in the country.

The laws impose sanctions on key senior Russian officials and organisations.

But it was also claimed in leaked emails that she dished dirt on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton allegedly given to her by Karapetyan’s Prosecutor-General’s Office.

He and Veselnitskaya are known to have worked in tandem on the campaign against Magnitsky laws in the West.

Russian critics have claimed that all three of Karapetyan’s criminal probes into the Skripal, Berezovsky and Litvinenko cases were aimed at masking Moscow’s involvement in each case.

An image of the driving license of alleged GRU ‘novichiok assassin’ Anatoliy Chepiga has been revealed.

Chepiga, 39, is alleged to have travelled to Britain to poison Sergei and Yulia Skripal using the alias Ruslan Boshirov.

British-based Bellingcat and Russian web sleuths The Insider have said they will on Tuesday reveal the real identity of the other ‘alias’ Alexander Petrov who travelled to Salisbury with the man posing as Boshirov.