Putin’s former image maker-turned-critic Gleb Pavlovsky dead

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spin doctor-turned-critic has died at the age of 71 at a Moscow hospice after a prolonged illness, his family announced.

Gleb Pavlovsky — a Soviet-era dissident who helped Putin burnish his strongman image, working for the Kremlin for 15 years until he fell out of favor in 2011 — died on Sunday, his family said on Telegram.

“Relatives and friends of Gleb Pavlovsky express their deep gratitude to everyone who supported and helped all these months, went through all of this with us, endured, understood and protected,” the announcement.

No details were provided about Pavlovsky’s illness and funeral arrangements were not announced.

Pavlovsky, who was born in the Black Sea port of Odesa,  became involved in dissident activities as a university student.

In 1982, he was arrested, pleaded guilty to the charges and testified against some of his colleagues — a move that some people in the dissident movement have never forgiven.

Pavlovsky was sentenced to three years of internal exile, after which he returned to Moscow and joined a pro-democracy camp spawned by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, he became a political consultant — and in 1996 helped stage a successful re-election campaign for Russia’s first president, Boris Yeltsin.

After Yeltsin stepped down, Pavlovsky helped secure Putin’s first election in March 2000.

He continued to consult the Kremlin until he lost the job of an adviser to the presidential office in 2011.

Pavlovsky began criticizing the Kremlin and denounced efforts to tighten control over Russia’s political scene, including a crackdown on the opposition and independent media.

He also strongly condemned Putin’s decision to send troops into Ukraine more than a year ago.

The English-language Moscow Times described Pavlovsky as “one of the most eloquent voices on the machinations and intrigue taking place in the halls of power.”

He is the latest of a slew of prominent Russian officials and business people to have died since the start of the war.  

Earlier this month, Marina Yankina, 58, a high-ranking defense official in the war against Ukraine, was found dead after falling from a high-rise window in an apartment building in St. Petersburg.

It was reported that she committed suicide.

Also this month, Russian Ministry of the Interior Maj. Gen. Vladimir Makarov, 72, died of an apparent suicide in a Moscow suburb.

Late last year, Col. Vadim Boiko, 44, deputy head of the Makarov Pacific Higher Naval School in Vladivostok, was found dead from multiple gunshot wounds – also in what was described as a suicide.

And sausage tycoon Pavel Antov, who also criticized the invasion of Ukraine, plunged to his death from a luxury hotel in India — three days after a pal lost his life on the same trip.

With Post Wires