Ukrainian ambassador to Thailand Andrii Beshta, 45, died on Koh Lipe Island off this southern province on Sunday morning, according to the provincial public relations office.
Pol Capt Bidan Saripa, a Koh Lipe police investigator, said Mr Beshta and his 17-year-old son, Ostap, arrived on the island on May 28 for a vacation. They stayed in the same room at Bu-nga Resort.
Beshta went to bed at 11pm on Saturday, his son said. At 4.30am on Sunday morning, he began vomiting, then lost consciousness and died shortly afterwards.
Beshta’s death was reported to Koh Lipe police at about 5.30am. The body of the Ukrainian ambassador was later taken from Koh Lipe Island to Satun Hospital.
There were no traces of the room being forced open or of the ambassador being attacked, the officer said. A statement attributed to National Police deputy spokesman Kissana Phathanacharoen later added that “Preliminary investigations showed no signs of him being attacked, no signs of a raid or violence.”
Satun governor Ekkarat Leesen said a preliminary autopsy at Satun Hospital on the mainland “concluded he died from a heart attack”.
A swab test for coronavirus at the hospital was negative.
The envoy, accompanied by his son and four friends, arrived on the island for a vacation on Friday. He wanted to say goodbye to his friend, the chairman of the Satun Tourism Association, as he was about to complete his tenure and return to Ukraine, according to the governor.
Beshta spent more than a decade of his career in Thailand, according to the embassy’s website, arriving first in 2007 as a counsellor to the diplomatic mission in Bangkok.
He was appointed the embassy’s deputy director-general in 2011, taking over as ambassador in 2016. (NNT)
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