Vadim Boyko is said to have been responsible for working with troops recently called up under Vladimir Putin’s “partial mobilization order” for the war against Ukraine. He reportedly showed up for work early Wednesday at the Makarov Pacific Higher Naval School in Vladivostok – and was later found with at least one gunshot wound. Several local media reports were quick to call his death a suicide, with the Far Eastern Gazette reporting that “a bullet hit his temple”. The news agency reported that Boyko’s suicide was confirmed by Pacific Fleet sources via a local television station. “Yes, Colonel Boyko committed suicide within its walls [naval college]”, the anonymous sources said. However, the report by the Russian Telegram channel Baza described a very different sequence of events. The channel, citing unspecified sources, said multiple gunshots rang out outside Boyko’s office shortly before the sergeant entered to find his body with five gunshot wounds to the chest. No suicide note was found at the scene, according to Baza, and investigators found five shell casings and four Makarov pistols. His death comes just a month after a military commissar for the Primorysky region was found dead, with local authorities claiming only that his “heart had stopped”.
