MOSCOW, March 11. /TASS/. Russian authorities expect that the United States will provide them with official data on the cause of death of former Russian press minister Mikhail Lesin, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday.
"We have not received any detailed information via channels established for such information and expect that we will be provided with detailed official information," Peskov said.
Autopsy revealed that Lesin’s death in Washington last November was caused by "blunt force trauma to the head," a joint statement by the District of Colombia’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) and Metropolitan Police Department said on Thursday.
The manner of death is still classified as "undetermined" and the investigation is ongoing.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry official spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on her Facebook on Friday that Moscow expects official data from Washington on the investigation into Lesin’s death.
"The Russian Embassy in the United States has repeatedly sent a request through diplomatic channels about the investigation into the death of a Russian citizen," Zakharova wrote. "The US side has not provided us with any substantive information. We are waiting for clarification from Washington and the relevant official details on the progress of the investigation."
Lesin, 57, a former aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, died on November 6, 2015 at the Dupont Circle in downtown Washington. The police found nothing suspicious at the scene then. The former minister’s friends in Moscow said that he was ill in recent years and underwent several operations, and, according to preliminary data, the cause of his death was a heart attack.
Lesin held the post of Russia’s Minister for the Press, TV and Radio Broadcasting and Mass Communications between July 1999 and February 2004. In 2013-2014 he was the CEO and Chairman of the Board of Gazprom-Media Holding.