Russian Musician Who Called Putin An 'Idiot' Dies Mysteriously After Apartment Raid

A Russian singer, who was accused of donating to the Ukrainian army and calling President Putin an "idiot," fell to his death from a window shortly after a police raid on his apartment, according to The New York Post.

Vadim Stroykin, accused of supporting the Ukrainian army, faced up to 20 years in prison for alleged ties to a terrorist organisation. Police raided his St Petersburg apartment in the Admiralteysky district on Wednesday as part of the ongoing investigation. According to the news outlet Fontanka, Stroykin was last seen alive on the 10th floor, stepping into the kitchen for water before reportedly opening the window and falling to his death.

Stroykin, an anti-war advocate and a staunch critic of Putin and the Ukraine war, had repeatedly bashed Putin and the Kremlin on social media.

"This idiot [Putin] declared war on his own people as well as a brother nation," he wrote in a 2022 post on the VKontakte social media platform. "I don't wish for his death; I want to see him tried and put in prison."

Stroykin was born in the Urals. He graduated from the British School of Journalism and began working at the radio station Ekho Moskvy - Yekaterinburg, where he was the author and host of the programme Anthology of Author's Song. He founded a guitar school, taught, and studied music himself.

According to NYPost, Stroykin is among the latest Putin critics to fall out a window or die a mysterious death. Russian ballet dancer Vladimir Shklyarov - an outspoken critic of the war - mysteriously plunged to his death from the fifth floor of a building last November. Russian authorities initially labelled the fall an accident, blaming the painkillers he was taking before a complex spinal surgery.

The dancer's death came after he too had lashed out on social media and publicly declared, "I am against the war in Ukraine."