He won international acclaim for dancing the lead roles in all-time great classical ballets such as Romeo and Juliet, Swan Lake and Giselle, but on Saturday night Vladimir Shklyarov, a 39-year-old principal with Russia’s prestigious Mariinsky Theatre, lost his life in a tragedy to rival any that he performed on stage. This former Romeo fell 60ft from a fifth-floor balcony – a shocking event, and one that has raised suspicions given that Shklyarov publicly criticised his country’s invasion of Ukraine.
Shklyarov was at home in his apartment block at Lieutenant Schmidt Embankment, close to the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, when his fall took place at around 1am. RIA Novosti, the Russian news agency, reported that a federal investigation has been launched to investigate the circumstances, but that, in a “preliminary” finding, his death had been ruled an accident.
However, there are already several competing narratives at play, including the suggestion that drugs were involved, that Shklyarov was depressed, or, understandably given Russia’s track record when it comes to dealing with critics of Vladimir Putin, that shadowy security forces were involved.
It was in 2022 that Shklyarov courageously shared his views on Facebook, posting: “Friends! I am against the war in Ukraine! I am for the people, for a peaceful sky above our heads. Politicians should be able to negotiate without shooting and killing civilians, for this they were given a tongue and a head.”
He continued: “My grandfather, Anatoly Filimonovich, graduated from school in Ukraine with a gold medal, my great-grandmother Sonya lived her whole life in Kyiv. It is impossible to watch everything that is happening today without tears… I want to dance… I want to love everyone – that is the purpose of my life… I do not want wars or borders.”
You can understand why people are now questioning Shklyarov’s so-called accident, says Tony Brenton, an author and former British ambassador to Russia. “Obviously there have been a lot of unexplained deaths in Russia recently – oil executives, for example.” Mikhail Rogachev, the former vice-president of Yukos, fell from a 10th floor window in Moscow just last month, while 2022 saw the deaths of Gazprom’s Leonid Shulman and Lukoil’s Ravil Maganov, the latter also tumbling from a great height.
“Of course we also know the fate of poor Alexei Navalny,” says Brenton. “So, inevitably, when something like [Shklyarov’s fall] happens, you ask whether something more is behind it.”
Another former diplomat who served in Moscow adds: “There is no doubt that something really revolting is going on in Russia. If you look at the number of Putin opponents who have been silenced, it’s a terrible, terrible thing – it’s death squad stuff.”
The dramatic nature of Shklyarov’s death would be consistent with the regime’s approach, he notes, which is “deliberately outlandish and eye-catching”.
“Russia’s a big country: when you’re trying to retain the attention of people across several time zones, and keep control of them, one way to do it is to make it extremely clear that something bad will happen if you step out of line. That applies whether you’re an actor, a ballerina, an oil magnate or a politician.
“Putin is now operating as a weird extension of Stalinism: he sees the rules that the rest of us operate by as a source of weakness. The poisoning in Salisbury illustrates that too – it says: ‘Wherever you go in the world, we’ll track you down and kill you in the nastiest way.’”
Unlike several high-profile artists who have fled abroad since the war began, Shklyarov bravely stayed put – although he must have understood the risks involved. One British expert in Russia’s security services says: “He would surely have been under surveillance since his comments about Ukraine. It’s hard to say whether he would really have been considered a threat, but I do tend to be cynical about why anyone would be out on their balcony in St Petersburg in November.”
There may yet be another equally sad, though rather less nefarious, explanation for that. Shklyarov’s partner, Irina Bartnovskaya, also a ballerina, claimed that he was on painkillers ahead of an upcoming spinal surgery, and that he “went out on the balcony to get some air and smoke, lost his balance [on a very narrow balcony] and fell down”. She added that it was “a stupid, unbearable accident”.
Meanwhile, multiple Russian news outlets, including 5-tv.ru, have made allegations that Shklyarov struggled with drug and alcohol addiction, and that his ex-wife Maria Shirinkina (former Mariinsky prima ballerina and mother to his two children, aged nine and three) had actually locked him in the apartment to stop him buying drugs. Some reports suggest that Shklyarov had been trying to escape by leaping to an adjacent balcony when he fell.
Russian TV channel 78 alleged that alcohol was found during a subsequent search of the apartment. It also claimed that a security guard reported seeing Shklyarov walking on the ledge of the apartment block and, when challenged, falling off when he then tried to return to his own balcony.
Shklyarov, who was born in Leningrad, became a principal and shining star of the Mariinsky (originally the Imperial Russian Ballet, latterly the Kirov) in 2011. Mark Monahan, The Telegraph’s chief dance critic, saw him perform several times at Covent Garden and describes him as a “tremendous artist”. He recalls Shklyarov’s “sympathetic and supremely athletic” Romeo and his triumphant guest appearance with the Royal Ballet in 2017. “You were always struck by his unusual warmth, and his death leaves a very considerable, desperately sad hole in the ballet firmament.”
At almost 40, Shklyarov was in fact nearing the end of his glorious dance career. Author Owen Matthews believes that some combination of depression related to the looming retirement, along with his divorce and addiction struggles, could be to blame for his death, rather than an assassination plot. “The point is that murdering someone is a risky and troublesome thing to do. The FSB kill high-profile traitors [like Sergei Skripal] or people they need out of the way in order to take their money.”
But, given the eerie similarity to the fates shared by numerous Putin critics, fevered conjecture around the tragic fate of this world-renowned artist will surely continue.
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