PhotoMOSCOW — A Russian journalist who had reported recently on clandestine Russian paramilitary groups in Syria died on Sunday after falling from the balcony of his fifth-floor apartment in Yekaterinburg, the authorities there said. Investigators summoned to the scene had found the door to his apartment locked from the inside, a police spokesman, Valery Gorelykh, told the local E1 news agency. “Those facts suggest that no one left the apartment and that there were probably no strangers there,” he said. The doubters pointed to a telephone call Mr. Borodin made the day before he fell. In an interview, Mr. Bashkov said that Mr. Borodin had called back an hour later and said he had been mistaken and that he thought the armed men were probably taking part in a training exercise.

Source: New York Times April 16, 2018 16:18 UTC