A secretive colonel who had carried the Russian president’s nuclear briefcase has been found shot at his home near Moscow.
Vadim Zimin, 53, is gravely ill in intensive care, say reports.
The retired colonel in the Federal Security Service had been in charge of the briefcase carrying the Russian nuclear controls which always accompanies the Kremlin leader.
He is known to have performed this role as aide-de-camp to former President Boris Yeltsin.
He continued in the security service rising to the role of colonel under his successor Vladimir Putin, but his precise role for the ex-KGB spy is unclear.
Zimin was found with gunshot wounds in the kitchen of his flat in Krasnogorsk, Moscow region.
At the time, his common law wife - a medic - was away treating the wounded from Putin’s war in Ukraine.
The shooting came as Zimin was facing criminal investigation for alleged bribe-taking after joining the customs service in a senior role, reported Moskovsky Komsomolets.
He was under house arrest over the criminal case.
He had denied any wrongdoing.
Zimin was discovered by his brother - who had been reportedly in the bathroom at the time of the shooting on Monday.
He lay in a pool of blood with a wound to the head.
An Izh 79-9TM traumatic pistol was lying nearby.
Only one picture exists of the secretive colonel.
The briefcase contains the launch apparatus for the Kremlin’s strategic missiles.
Putin is known to taunt the West by insisting the officer carrying the nuclear codes is visible beside him.
He did this in April when attending the funeral of ultra-nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky in Moscow.
Meanwhile, dramatic footage emerged yesterday showing the moment Russia's 55th colonel to die in the war was knocked out of the air when a Ukrainian missile struck his chopper.
Lieutenant-Colonel Sergey Gundorov, 51, was struck near Volnovakha in the Donbas.
The military helicopter flew on after being hit with a portable surface-to-air missile.
His stricken Mi-35 touched the ground before cartwheeling over a narrow strip of woodland and crashing in a fireball in a field.
Flames and black smoke are seen emanating from the explosion.
A second Russian helicopter is seen firing decoy flares and apparently escapes unscathed.
Gundorov is the 55th known Russian colonel to be killed in Vladimir Putin ’s war in Ukraine.