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Russia’s Investigative Committee stated on Monday that the nation’s transport minister Roman Starovoyt, 53, had died from a suspected suicide, on the identical day that he was fired by President Vladimir Putin.
A number of Telegram channels with shut ties to the safety companies reported that Starovoyt, a former head of the Ukraine-bordering Kursk area, shot himself in his Tesla Mannequin X, in a city west of Moscow.
Starovoyt’s dying got here amid a corruption probe into the development of defensive fortifications in Kursk, which he ruled till Could 2024.
It marks the primary suicide of a senior Russian official in years, and the primary to got here amid scrutiny over choices made throughout the battle in Ukraine.
The preliminary reviews of Starovoyt’s suicide got here simply hours after Putin formally dismissed him from his ministerial publish on Monday morning, although it was unclear whether or not he died earlier than or after the decree was signed.
A prison case has been launched towards Starovoyt’s successor as governor of the Kursk area, components of which had been beneath partial Ukrainian management for six months till March 2025.
The investigation centres on alleged embezzlement throughout the building of defensive fortifications.
Starovoyt was named in testimony by a number of figures concerned within the case, together with his successor in Kursk, Alexei Smirnov, in keeping with Kommersant, one in all Russia’s main enterprise shops.
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