Russian diplomats are dropping like flies
Normally the life of a diplomat is pretty cushy. You get paid a six-figure salary, you get to live in some of the finest real estate in the world. Your life is a pleasant whirlwind of meetings, speeches, dinner and cocktail parties, the only downside is that you have to do a bit of paperwork sending dispatches back to the home country.
When you reach retirement age, you get a comfortable pension, and if you are a senior British diplomat, a knighthood to top things off as well. It is a nice life.
Except if you are a Russian diplomat, which appears to be one of the most dangerous jobs on earth.
It is the risk of unexpectedly dying, you see.
At 7 a.m. on November 8th 2016 (US election day), a Russian diplomat, Sergei Krivov, was found lying outside the Russian consulate in New York with a head injury. By the time the emergency services arrived, he was dead. The Russian consulate's explanation for what happened, kept changing. First they said he had jumped to his death. Then they said it was a heart attack. Nobody is quite sure who Sergei Krivov was or exactly what he did at the consulate.
Then on 19th December 2016, Andrei Karlov, the Russian ambassador to Turkey, was shot dead at an art exhibition in Ankara, Turkey. His assassin was an off-duty Turkish police officer who said he was protesting Russia's involvement in Syria. The world held it's breath, assuming that this would strain Russian-Turkish relations, but the two countries which are often at odds with each other, made a show of support for each other.
Then on 9th January 2017, a senior Russian diplomat in their consulate in Greece, Andrey Malanin, was found dead on the floor of his Athens apartment. Greek police reported that "the first signs" showed a natural death.
On 20th February 2017, Vitaly Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the UN, suddenly became ill at 9:30 a.m. outside the Russian embassy in New York, and was taken to hospital where he died. The cause of death appears to be a heart attack.
Vitaly Churkin is the most senior of the Russian diplomats to die.
It is entirely possible that these Russian diplomats are extremely unlucky and that Russians have a greater tendency to die early than people from other countries (though it is worth noting that even ambassadors from poor nations manage to survive unscathed to retirement). The other explanation is that foul play is afoot, and someone is getting rid of people.
The last time there was a spate of Russian diplomats dying was in the 1920's, when the Russian revolution was in full swing. (Their deaths were more upfront, no "heart attacks" but blatant murders. Vatslav Vorovsky was assasinated in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1923. Alexander Griboyedov was set upon by a mob in 1929, in Iran. Pyotr Voykov was assasinated in Warsaw in 1927.)