Russian Minister Mysteriously Found Dead Hours After Putin Fired Him

The former Russian transport minister was found dead hours after he was fired by the Kremlin on Monday morning.

Roman Starovoit joined President Vladimir Putin’s cabinet in May 2024 after serving as governor of the Kursk Oblast region. He entered the transportation role at a difficult time, with Ukrainian drone attacks disrupting air travel.

That chaos led to Starovoit’s firing early Monday morning, which the Kremlin announced in a brief decree titled “Roman Starovoit dismissed from post of Minister of Transport.”

Starovoit was dogged by allegations of corruption in his inner circle. His successor as governor of Kurst, Alexey Smirnov, was detained in April for allegedly embezzling funds allocated for defense.

Seven hours after Starovoit was fired, Russian media outlet Izvestiya reported that Starovoit had been found dead. The cause of death was reported as a gunshot wound.

The details of his death remain murky. A source who spoke to Izvestiya claimed that Starovoit died in his home on the outskirts of Moscow. However, Newsweek cited a Telegram post from Russia’s Investigative Committee that said Starovoit had been found dead in his car. CNN, meanwhile, claimed that his death was under investigation, and the “main theory is suicide.”

Footage posted on X showed a Tesla Model X, believed to be Starovoit’s, surrounded by yellow tape in a Moscow parking lot. Another local source reported that an award pistol, an honorary weapon given to Russian officials by the government, was found near his body.

The murky details and timing of Starovoit’s death fueled speculation on social media that the Kremlin was involved in his death.

It is not the first time during the Ukraine war that the death of a Russian official has occurred under mysterious circumstances. In 2023, Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a plane crash, two months after a mutiny he orchestrated against Putin’s government.