One can understand why people now question Shklyarov’s so-called accident, says Tony Brenton, 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 in 2022 Gazprom’s Leonid Shulman and Lukoil’s Ravil Maganov were killed, the latter also tumbling from a great height.

“Of course we also know the plight of the poor Alexei Navalnysays Brenton. “So, inevitably, when something like (Shklyarov’s case) happens, you ask if there’s something more behind it.”

Another former diplomat who served in Moscow comments: “There is no doubt that something really outrageous 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 conspicuous.”

Russia is a big country: when you’re trying to hold people’s attention across multiple time zones and maintain control over them, one way to make it extremely clear is that something bad will happen if you step out of line. This applies regardless of whether you are an actor, ballerina, oil tycoon or politician.

“Putin now operates as a strange extension of Stalinism: he sees the rules by which the rest of us operate as a source of weakness. The Salisbury poisoning also illustrates that – it says ‘wherever you go in the world, we will track you down and kill you in the nastiest way”.

Shklyarov, unlike several high-profile artists who have fled abroad since the war began, bravely stayed put, although he must have understood the risks. A British expert on Russia’s security services says: “He would certainly 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 tend to be cynical about why anyone would be out on their balcony, shivering, in St Petersburg in November.”