What the firing and death of a transport minister reveals about Putin’s Russia

As scattered details of the apparent suicide of Russia’s former transport minister Roman Starovoit trickled in via state media on Monday, one stood out. Near his body, the Kommersant newspaper reported, investigators found a Glock pistol that Starovoit had been given as an award.

In October 2023, in his previous job as governor of Russia’s Kursk region, Starovoit was pictured in a local news article being presented with a velvet-boxed firearm from the region’s interior ministry for his role in maintaining security there.

Fast forward 21 months and his death came amid reports he may have been doing the exact opposite. Two sources told Reuters he was suspected of being involved in a scheme to embezzle millions of dollars earmarked for border defenses. Defenses that would undoubtedly have come in useful when Ukrainian troops launched a surprise invasion there last August.

There’s no way of knowing if it was the same pistol, and it’s not clear yet if the corruption case had anything to do with his firing (no official reason was given) or his death. But the image it creates of a state-sponsored self-destruction, of a once rising star in Vladimir Putin’s political elite dead near his Tesla, with the spoils of his former loyalty, is especially poignant in today’s Russia.

More than three years into Putin’s unprovoked war on Ukraine, the Kremlin’s political vice is tightening again. Fealty to the regime is no guarantee of safety, and there are fewer places to hide from increasingly brutal consequences.