It was Russia’s dramatic start to this week.
On Monday morning, President Vladimir Putin fired his Minister of Transport, Rome Starvoight.
By the afternoon, Starvoite was dead. His body was found in a park on the edge of Moscow and was injured by a bullet in his head. The pistol is reportedly located next to your body.
Investigators said they presumed that the former minister had taken his own life.
I felt a sense of shock this morning at the tabloid Moskovsky-comomollet.
“The suicide of Lowmaster Voight hours after the president ordered him to plunder him is an almost unique event in Russian history,” the paper declared.
That’s because before the Soviet Union collapses, the government ministers are killing it here, so they need to go back over 30 years ago.
In August 1991, he shot himself after a failed coup by a communist hardliners, one of the Soviet Home Minister Borispugo, one of the coup ring leaders.
The Kremlin has spoken little about Starvoight’s death.
“How shocked was the federal minister dead a few hours after his dismissal by the president?” I asked Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Vladimir Putin, during a Kremlin conference call.
“Ordinary people can only be shocked by this,” Peskov replied. “Of course, this also shocked us.
“It’s up to research to provide answers to all the questions. It’s ongoing, but we can only speculate. But that’s more for the media and political critics. Not for us.”
The Russian media is in fact full of speculation.
Today, several Russian newspapers link what happened to the Lowmaster Voit with events in the Kursk region, bordering Ukraine. Before being appointed Minister of Transport in May 2024, Starvoit was the governor of Kursk Regional for over five years.
Under his leadership, and under a large sum of government money, Governor Starvoite began construction of a defensive fortress along the border. These were not strong enough to prevent Ukrainian troops in the Kursk region from smashing through territory last year and seizing them.
Since then, Starovoit Governor Alexei Smirnov and his successor as former deputy Dedov have been arrested and charged with massive fraud in connection with the construction of the fortress.
“Mr. Starovoit may have been one of the main defendants in this case,” proposed today’s edition of Business Daily Kommersant.
Russian authorities have not confirmed it.
But if it was the fear of prosecution that drove a former minister to take his life, what does it tell you about Russia today?
“The most dramatic part of this is that we are high-level government officials due to all the resternizations that have been happening in Russia in recent years. [kills himself] Because he has no other way out of the system,” says Nina Krushcheva, professor of international affairs at a new school in New York.
“He must have been afraid that he would receive decades of prison for decades while he was investigating, and that his family would suffer very much, so I won’t be able to leave anytime soon. [killed himself] Because in 1937 he felt he could not go outside. When you start thinking about 1937 in today’s environment, you give you a big pause. ”
The death of the Lowmaster Voight may have made the headlines for this paper. However, this “nearly 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. Therefore, when it comes to television, authorities tend to be more cautious and cautious about messaging.
Monday’s main evening breaking news on Russia-1 included a four-minute report on Putin’s appointment of new representative Minister of Transport Andrei Nikitin.
There was no mention of the previous Minister of Transport being fired. Or it turns out he is dead.
Just 40 minutes later, towards the end of the breaking news, Anchorman briefly mentioned the death of the Lowmaster Voight.
The newsreader gave everything 18 seconds. In other words, most Russians probably won’t see Monday’s dramatic events as a significant development.
For political elites, that’s another story. For ministers, governors and other Russian officials who have tried to become part of the political system, what happened to Starvois would serve as a warning.
“Unlike before, I was able to get these jobs, get rich and get promoted from the local level to the federal level. Today, it’s clearly not a career path if you want to stay alive,” says Nina Khrushcheva.
“Not only upward mobility, but even downward mobility, ends with death.”
This is a reminder of the dangers that come from a system foul.
