[4] In 1983, Safronov was transferred to the Titov Space Center (Главный испытательный центр испытаний и управления космическими средствами) in Krasnoznamensk, a closed town in Moscow Oblast.
[10] Safronov returned to Moscow in late February 2007 from a reporting trip to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, where he had covered the annual IDEX 2007 arms exhibition's gathering of defense manufacturers.
He had stated that he would check information that he had received on possible new deliveries of Russian weapons to the Middle East while at the arms exhibition in the United Arab Emirates.
He had information that those deals would be concluded through a third party, in order for Moscow to avoid accusations in the West of selling weapons to pariah states.
[11] Prior to his return, Safronov called the editorial office at Kommersant from Abu Dhabi to say that he had found confirmation of the claims.
On 27 February he attended a press conference held by the head of the Federal Service of Military and Technical Cooperation Mikhail Dmitriev at ITAR-TASS.
There he told colleagues that he had found information that more contracts had been signed between Russia and Syria for the sale of MiG-29 jets and Pantsir-S1 and Iskander-E missiles.
He added that he would not write about those deals, however, because he had been warned that doing so would cause an international scandal and the FSB would make charges against him of revealing state secrets stick.
[14] Safronov fell out of the staircase window between the fourth and the fifth floors of his apartment building at 9 Nizhny Novgorod Street (Нижегородская улица) around 4 p.m. on 2 March.
Noticing the open window on the stairway between the fourth and fifth floors and the fact that Safronov's shoes had come off and his jacket and sweater were pulled up to his armpits, the students called for an ambulance.
[17] "The suicide theory has become dominant in the investigation, but all those who knew Ivan Safronov categorically reject it," Kommersant said in an article on 5 March [2].
General Vladimir Mikhaylov, Commander of the Russian Air Force, expressed in a statement: "[Safronov] was one of those people who is remembered for his bright creative talent.
"[18]His son, also named Ivan, worked on military reporting for Kommersant until 2019, when he joined a separate daily newspaper, Vedomosti.