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Russian journalist's death triggers cries of foul play

A senior Russian journalist who embarrassed the country's military establishment with a series of exclusive stories has been found dead outside his flat in mysterious circumstances.

The body of Ivan Safronov, 51-year-old defense correspondent for the newspaper Kommersant, was discovered on Friday. He apparently fell from a fifth-floor window.

Although prosecutors say they suspect that Safranov committed suicide, his colleagues insisted that he had no reason to kill himself. They said he was the latest in a long line of Russian journalists to die in unexplained circumstances.

"Nobody believes he could have committed suicide. He had no reason to kill himself," his colleague Sergei Dupin said.

Safranov -- a married father of two -- had a happy family life and a successful career, he said.

Several newspapers pointed to Safranov's track record of breaking stories about Russia's nuclear program. Last December he revealed that the experimental Bulava intercontinental ballistic missile, hailed by President Vladimir Putin as the basis for Russia's future nuclear might, did not work. It had failed to launch for the third consecutive time, he wrote.

His exclusive infuriated military commanders, who continue to deny problems with the missile. They launched an internal investigation and threatened Safranov with legal action.

"For some reason, it is those journalists who are disliked by the authorities who die in this country," the mass-selling daily Moskovsky Komsomolets said on Monday. "Ivan Safronov was one of those. He knew a lot about the real situation in the army and the defense industries, and he reported it."

Witnesses to his death said they heard what sounded like a "large snowfall."

When they looked out from a nearby balcony, they saw Safronov sprawled on the pavement.

On Monday, Moscow's prosecutor's office said its inquiry into the death included the possibility that he had been forced to jump. But they said the exact nature of their investigation would become clearer once autopsy results come out. The results were scheduled to be released yesterday.

Kommersant devoted a page of tributes to Safronov. The paper said it would conduct its own investigation into his death.
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