RUSSIA’S top judge and Putin’s former university pal has died today – just 15 months after taking the helm of the country’s Supreme Court.

Irina Podnosova, 71, died after battling cancer for over a year, sources say, but Ukrainian commentators say this is the latest in a string of “mysterious” deaths in the Russian elite.

Podnosova, who was appointed as Chief Justice of Russia’s Supreme Court in April 2024 under Vladimir Putin’s recommendation, died in Moscow, according to Russian media.

She succeeded long-time chief Vyacheslav Lebedev, becoming the first woman to hold the position.

It comes as Oil tycoon Andrey Badalov, 62, died several weeks ago after falling from the 17th-floor of a luxury Moscow tower block, where he lived in a penthouse.

Suicide was recorded as the preliminary cause of death after a letter supposedly written by Badalov was reportedly found.

Badalov was vice-president of Transneft – Russia’s state oil pipeline operator and the largest such company in the world.

Putin’s transport minister Roman Starovoit, 53, also died this month from gunshot wounds on the day he was fired – a death officially declared as suicide.

In 2023, leading war official Marina Yankina, 58, a finance official at Russia’s Ministry of Defence, was found dead after falling 160ft from a 16th-floor window in St. Petersburg.

In 2022, Ravil Maganov, chairman of Lukoil, Russia’s second-largest oil company, died after plunging from a sixth-floor window at Moscow’s elite Central Clinical Hospital – also known as the Kremlin Clinic.

On the same morning, Putin – who had earlier decorated Maganov, 67, with a top honour – swept into the hospital to pay his final respects to Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, who had died the same week.