Russia wants info on U.S. death

Russian officials said Friday that they want more information from the U.S. about the mysterious death of a former aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin who was found in an upscale Washington hotel room last fall.

Autopsy results released Thursday said Mikhail Lesin, Putin’s former press minister who helped found the Englishlanguage news service Russia Today, died of blunt force trauma to the head and other parts of his body, but authorities have not said how he got the injuries. The 57-year-old was discovered in his room at the Doyle Dupont Circle Hotel in November and Russian media, citing relatives, previously reported that the Lesin suffered a heart attack.

“We haven’t received any detailed information via formal channels of communication that (we use) for such cases, and in the light of these media reports we hope that we will receive the detailed information,” Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Friday.

On Thursday evening, District of Columbia police and the medical examiner’s office said in a joint statement that the cause of Lesin’s death was blunt force trauma to the head and contributing causes were blunt force injuries to the neck, torso, arms and legs. The manner of death was undetermined, the statement said.

Police spokesman Dustin Sternbeck said that the case is “very much an active investigation” and officials would release updates when they are available. He didn’t expect any additional details Friday.

Lesin, one of Russia’s leading media managers, helped stage Putin’s ascent to power in 2000 and was a key figure in the Kremlin’s effort to establish tight control over the nation’s media throughout the 2000s.

Lesin built a quick career in television advertising in the early 1990s, making his company the industry’s leader. In 1999, he was named Russian media minister and played a key role Putin’s first election campaign. Following Putin’s election, he oversaw the Kremlin’s efforts to establish state control over Russia’s top private TV channel, NTV, and helped tame other media.

In 2004 he was named Putin’s adviser, and in the following year oversaw the launch of Russia Today, currently known as RT, a state-controlled channel.