A Russian singer who called Vladimir Putin an “idiot” and allegedly donated to the Ukrainian military has died after falling from the window of his 10th-floor apartment, according to reports.
Vadim Stroykin fell to his death during police searches over his alleged links to Ukraine, Russian media outlets said on Thursday.
He was facing up to 20 years in prison if charged and convicted of participating in a terrorist organisation for his alleged backing of the Ukrainian army, they said.
The 59-year-old musician is said to have stepped into his kitchen for a “glass of water” before being found dead on the ground outside.
Mr Stroykin joins a long list of Russians who have fallen to their deaths in unusual circumstances or in other incidents shrouded in mystery over the last two decades.
He was not involved in politics but had spoken openly about the war in Ukraine, regularly posting on VK, Russia’s equivalent of Facebook.
“This idiot [Putin] declared war on his own people as well as a brother nation,” he wrote in March 2022. “I don’t wish for his death; I want to see him tried and put in prison.”
Following the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in an Arctic penal colony in February last year, Mr Stroykin wrote: “B—-rds.”
The circumstances of his death are being examined by Russia’s investigative committee.
People have regularly been convicted for “discrediting the Russian army” in social media posts since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, but Russian authorities have stepped up their campaign against opposition in recent months.
Just last week, a top Russian colonel perished after falling 50ft from a window, while Colonel Alexey Zubkov, an employee of Russia’s Investigative Committee, is still fighting for his life after a similar fall.
One of the most high-profile incidents saw Ravil Maganov, chairman of Lukoil, Russia’s second-largest oil company, fall from a sixth-floor window at an exclusive hospital known as the Kremlin Clinic in 2022.
In 2023, Marina Yankina, 58, a prominent war official and head of the financial support department for the Russian Defence Ministry’s Western Military District, was discovered dead after falling from a 16th-floor window in St Petersburg.