Russia’s transport minister was found dead from a gunshot wound, Russian authorities said on Monday, hours after the Kremlin announced he had been relieved of his duties.
Law enforcement authorities said they were investigating the death as a possible suicide.
The minister, Roman Starovoyt, 53, served as governor of the Kursk region for nearly six years before being appointed to the transport post in May 2024. Three months after his promotion, Ukraine forces crossed into the region and seized territory that its military held until earlier this year.
The monthslong occupation of Kursk was the first invasion of Russian territory since World War II and a major embarrassment to President Vladimir Putin. It set off domestic recriminations that in recent months have gathered steam.
Russian authorities have arrested former officials from Kursk and accused them of embezzling more than $12 million in funds that Moscow had earmarked to fortify the border with Ukraine during Starovoyt’s tenure as governor.
In April, Starovoyt’s successor and longtime deputy, Alexei Smirnov, was arrested and accused of embezzlement as part of the case. Smirnov was the acting governor of Kursk at the time of the Ukrainian invasion.
The Russian state news agency, Tass, citing Russian law enforcement, reported Monday that more people may be charged soon because one of the defendants has begun to “actively testify” against others.
The events have rattled the Moscow elite and spurred speculation about the reasons behind them.
On Monday morning, the Kremlin posted a decree signed by Putin that relieved Starovoyt of his duties as transport minister. Within hours, the Russian leader was shown in the Kremlin meeting with Starovoyt’s replacement, Andrei Nikitin, the former governor of the Novgorod region.
On a call with reporters, Dmitry Peskov, the spokesperson for the Kremlin, declined to explain why Starovoyt had been removed. “I don’t have anything here to add,” Peskov said. “It is a decision of the head of state.”
The news followed a weekend of travel disruption, when hundreds of flights were grounded at Russian airports as Ukraine launched drone attacks.
But Ekaterina Schulmann, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, had pointed to the embezzlement case in Kursk, writing on social media that Starovoyt could be imprisoned.
Russian news agencies later reported that Starovoyt was dead.
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