One of the greatest ballet stars in the world dies by losing his balance. Not suspicious at all.
Source: The Guardian
The acclaimed Russian ballet dancer Vladimir Shklyarov has died aged 39.
Shklyarov died after falling from the fifth floor of a building on Saturday, a spokesperson for the Mariinsky Theatre told the news outlet Fontanka at the weekend.
The spokesperson, Anna Kasatkina, told Russian media that Shklyarov had been taking painkillers for a back injury and had been scheduled to undergo spinal surgery on Monday.
While a federal investigation has been launched to investigate the dancer’s death, “the preliminary cause” has been ruled an accident, the Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported.
"A stupid, unbearable accident" that just happens to occur with great frequency in Mother Russia, especially among those who criticize Putin's war in Ukraine.
Shklyarov condemned Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in a now-deleted Instagram post from March 2022, declaring his opposition to “all kinds of military actions.”
“It is impossible to watch everything that is happening today without tears,” Shklyarov wrote.
In contrast to Olga Smirnova, a star ballerina of the Bolshoi Ballet who fled Russia and moved to Europe, Shklyarov continued performing in Russia and refrained from further commenting on the war.
Russian dancers paid tribute to Shklyarov after the news of his death broke, with Irina Baranovskaya calling his death “a stupid, unbearable accident” on Telegram.
Baranovskaya said Shklyarov “went out onto the balcony to get some air and smoke” and “lost his balance” on the “very narrow balcony”.
