The former prime minister of an oil-rich Russian region has died after he was rammed by a car while crossing a street.

Magomed Abdulayev, 61, close to ex-Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, was hospitalised but died from severe injuries in Makhachkala city on the Caspian Sea.

Ukraine immediately linked the death to those of several top Russians with links to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Abdulayev, also a former rector of Dagestan State Pedagogical University, was crossing Magomed Gadzhiev Street when he was hit by a Niva car.

The driver was reported to be aged 55 but it was not disclosed whether or not he had been detained or arrested.

Pedestrian Abdulayev was crossing the road at an unauthorised point, said reports.

He had been the premier of the oil-rich Dagestan region from 2010 to 2013 and was appointed when Medvedev was president.

Medvedev - a close ally of Putin and a bellicose blogger on the war in Ukraine - had known him since they were graduate students at St Petersburg State University, say reports.

Medvedev, 57, is currently the deputy to Putin on Russia’s security council and has been called his closest political ally, heading his United Russia party.

Pravda Geraschenko Telegram channel, run by Ukrainian official Anton Geraschenko, posted: “Another mysterious death of a Russian official.

“A car knocked down the ex-premier of Dagestan in Makhachkala, killing him.

“The Russian media report that Magomed Abdulayev, 61, became the victim of a car collision when he crossed the road in the wrong place.”

His death comes less than two months after Putin’s man in occupied Kherson, Kirill Stremousov, 45, was killed in a car crash when his armoured Lexus was torn apart.

Russia has been hit by a number of “suspicious” deaths - many linked to the energy sector - since tension escalated ahead of Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Wealthy politician Nikolay Petrunin - aka Russia’s “Gas Wonderkid” - was only 47 and had been in a coma for a month when he died in October.

The multi-millionaire father of three, formerly a top gas industry executive, was reported to have died from complications linked to severe Covid.

He was deputy chairman of the Russian parliament’s powerful energy committee, and a Putin loyalist and “political protege”.

His businesses built gas pipelines for major Russian energy operators and he had links to Kremlin gas behemoth Gazprom - now starving the West of Russian supplies over the war - and Rosneft.

On September 1, oil tycoon Ravil Maganov, 67, fell to his death from the sixth-floor window of a Moscow hospital.

One report says the chairman of Lukoil - Russia’s second-largest oil company - was “beaten” before he was “thrown out of a window”, however, this was not confirmed officially.

His company had voiced opposition to the war in Ukraine.

Strangely, Putin arrived at the elite Central Clinical Hospital very soon after Maganov’s body was found to pay his last respects to final Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who had died at the hospital.

In July, Yuri Voronov, 61, head of a transport and logistics company for a Gazprom-linked company, was found dead in his swimming pool. A leading friend who is a top criminologist warned of foul play.

Two more deaths of Gazprom-linked executives were reported in elite homes near St Petersburg amid suspicions that apparent suicides may have been murders.

Alexander Tyulakov, 61, a senior Gazprom financial and security official at the deputy general director level, was discovered dead by his lover the day after the war started in Ukraine in February.

His neck was in a noose in his home. Yet reports say he had been badly beaten shortly before he “took his own life”, leading to speculation he was under intense pressure.

In the same elite Leninsky gated housing development in the Leningrad region three weeks earlier, Leonid Shulman, 60, head of transport at Gazprom Invest, was found dead with multiple stab wounds in a pool of blood on his bathroom floor.

Billionaire Alexander Subbotin, 43, also linked to Kremlin-friendly energy giant Lukoil where he was a top manager, was found dead in May after “taking advice from shamans”.

One theory is that Subbotin - who also owned a shipping company - was poisoned by toad venom triggering a heart attack.

In April, wealthy Vladislav Avayev, 51, a former Kremlin official, appeared to have taken his own life after killing his wife Yelena, 47, and daughter, 13.

He had high-level links to the leading Russian financial institution Gazprombank.

Friends have disputed reports that he was jealous after his wife admitted she was pregnant by their driver.

There are claims he had access to the financial secrets of the Kremlin elite.

Several days later multi-millionaire Sergey Protosenya, 55, was found hanged in Spain, after evidently killing with an axe his wife Natalia, 53, and their teenage daughter, Maria.

He was a former deputy chairman of Novatek, a company also closely linked to the Kremlin.

There have also been questions over the death of Putin’s point man for developing Russia’s vast Arctic resources who “fell overboard” to his death from a boat sailing off the country’s Pacific coast.

Ivan Pechorin, 39, had recently attended a major conference hosted by the Kremlin warmonger in Vladivostok.

The high-flyer was managing director of Putin’s Far East and Arctic Development Corporation.

A mobile phone multi-millionaire and his wife were found stabbed to death in another case which has raised questions.

Naked Yevgeny Palant, 47, and his wife Olga, 50, both Ukrainian-born, were found with multiple knife wounds by their daughter Polina, 20.

Immediate briefing to the media claimed the woman took her own life in a jealous rage after Palant said he was leaving her.

Yet this was strongly disputed by the couple’s best friend.