Russia’s Investigative Committee has announced that former Transport Minister Roman Starovoit has been found dead, and it is reported that he committed suicide by shooting himself, writes BBC.
Starovoit was dismissed from his post only on the morning of the 7th of July, and the Kremlin did not give an official reason for the minister’s dismissal. His place was taken by the previous Deputy Transport Minister Andrei Nikitin.
The prosecutor’s office has reported that an investigation is underway to clarify the circumstances of the case.
Starovoit was appointed Transport Minister in May 2024, and before that he was the governor of the Kursk region for almost six years. In August 2024, the region was occupied by Ukrainian forces, and Moscow only recently managed to regain control of the region. However, Kyiv indicates that its army still controls a small part of Russian territory.
Starovoit’s predecessor, Alexei Smirnov, also was in office for only a short time.
Smirnov was arrested in April and later charged with embezzling funds intended for border reinforcement. According to the Russian media outlet Kommersant, Starovoit was due to testify in court.
The exact time of Starovoit’s death is unknown. The head of Russia’s Defense Commission, Andrei Karpatov, told RTV1 that the former minister died “quite a while ago”. Before the news of the minister’s death broke, journalists asked Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov whether the minister’s dismissal meant Vladimir Putin had lost trust in him over the developments in Kursk, to which Peskov replied that if so, he would have said so.
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