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It was a dramatic start to the week in Russia.
On Monday morning, President Vladimir Putin dismissed his transport minister, Roman Starovoit.
In the afternoon, Starovoit was found dead, his body discovered in a park on the outskirts of Moscow with a gunshot wound to the head.
A pistol was apparently found near the body. Investigators said they assumed the former minister had committed suicide.
There was a sense of shock in the tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets this morning.
"The suicide of Roman Starovoi just hours after the president's order to dismiss him is an almost unique event in Russian history," the newspaper declared.
That's because we have to go back more than thirty years, before the collapse of the Soviet Union, for an example of a government minister here killing himself.
In August 1991, after the failure of a coup by hardline communists, one of the coup leaders - Soviet Interior Minister Boris Pugo - shot himself.
The Kremlin has said little about Starovoi's death.
“How shocked were you that a federal minister was found dead just hours after being fired by the president?” I asked Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, in a conference call at the Kremlin.
“Normal people cannot help but be shocked by this,” Peskov replied.
“Of course, it shocked us too. It depends on the investigation to provide answers to all the questions. While the investigation is ongoing, one can only speculate. But that is more for the media and political experts. Not for us.”
The Russian press has indeed been full of speculation. Today, several Russian newspapers linked what happened to Roman Starovoit to events in the Kursk region, which borders Ukraine. Before his appointment as transport minister in May 2024, Starovoit had been governor of the Kursk region for more than five years.
Under his leadership - and with large sums of government money - Governor Starovoit had begun building defensive fortifications along the border. These were not strong enough to prevent Ukrainian troops from breaking through and occupying territory in the Kursk region the previous year.
Since then, Starovoi's successor as governor, Alexei Smirnov, and his former deputy Alexei Dedov have been arrested and charged with large-scale fraud in connection with the construction of the fortifications.
"Mr. Starovoit may have become one of the main defendants in this case," suggested today's issue of the business daily Kommersant.
Russian authorities have not confirmed this. But if it was fear of prosecution that drove a former minister to take his own life, what does this tell us about today's Russia?
“The most dramatic part of this, with all the re-Stalinization that has happened in Russia in recent years, is that a senior government official [kills himself] because there is no other way out of the system,” says Nina Khrushcheva, a professor of international affairs at The New School in New York.
“He must have been afraid that he would be sentenced to dozens of years in prison if he were under investigation and that his family would suffer enormously. So there is no way out. I immediately thought of Sergo Ordzhonikidze, one of Stalin’s ministers, who [killed himself] in 1937 because he thought there was no way out. When you start thinking about 1937 in today’s environment, it makes you think a lot.”
The death of Roman Starovoi may have made headlines in international newspapers. But this "almost unique event in Russian history" has received minimal coverage on state television. Perhaps that's because the Kremlin recognizes the power of television to shape public opinion. In Russia, television is more influential than newspapers. So when it comes to television, the authorities tend to be more careful and measured with their messages.
Monday night's main news bulletin on Russia-1 included a four-minute report on Putin's appointment of Andrei Nikitin as acting transport minister. There was no mention at all that the former transport minister had been fired. Or that he had been found dead.
Just forty minutes later, towards the end of the newscast, the show's host briefly mentioned Roman Starovoi's death. The news anchor devoted all 18 seconds to it, meaning most Russians probably won't see Monday's dramatic events as a significant development.
For the political elite, it's a different story. For ministers, governors and other Russian officials who have sought to be part of the political system, what happened to Starovoi will serve as a warning.
"Unlike before, when you could get these jobs, get rich, get promoted from the regional to the federal level, today, this is clearly not a career path if you want to stay alive," says Nina Khrushcheva.
"Not only is there no upward mobility at first, but downward mobility ends in death." It's a reminder of the dangers of falling into conflict with the system./ BBC
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