The death of the Minister of Russia serves as a warning of the political elite

It was a dramatic beginning of the week in Russia.

On Monday morning, President Vladimir Putin released his Transport Minister Raman Starovois.

By the afternoon, Starova was dead; His body was discovered in the park on the edge of Moscow with a gunshot wound. The gun is supposedly next to the body.

Investigators said they believed that the former minister had taken his life.

The tabloid of the Muscovite Community had a sense of shock this morning.

“The suicide of the Roman Old Elder, a few hours after the president’s order is fired, is an almost unique phenomenon in the history of Russian,” the document reads.

This is because you need to return for more than thirty years, before the fall of the Soviet Union, for the example of the Minister of Government who kills itself.

In August 1991, after the failure of the state coup of the Communist Hardliners, one of the leaders of the rings of the coup – Soviet Minister of Internal Affairs Boris Pug – shot himself.

The Kremlin said little about the death of Starovoit.

“How shocked you were that the federal minister was found dead a few hours after the presidential dismissal?” I asked the press secretary of Vladimir Putin Dmitry Peskov at the Kremlin Conference.

“Normal people cannot be shocked,” Pesko replied. “Of course, it also shocked us.

“The investigation should answer all the questions. Although it continues, it is only possible to think. But it is more for the media and political cleaners. Not for us.”

The Russian press was really full of speculation.

Today, several Russian newspapers have linked what happened to Raman Starovoit with events in the Kursk region bordering Ukraine. Prior to the appointment of the Minister of Transport in May 2024, Starovois was a regional governor of Kursk for more than five years.

Under his leadership – and with heavy sums of state money – the governor of Starovois began the construction of defensive fortifications along the border. They were not strong enough to prevent the Ukrainian troops to break through and capture the territory in the Kursk region last year.

Since then, the successor of Starovait as governor Alexei Smirnov and his former deputy Alexei Dedov have been arrested and accused of large -scale fraud against the construction of fortifications.

“Mr -n Starovoit may have become one of the main defendants in this case,” the Business Daily Kommersant suggested today’s edition.

The Russian authorities have not confirmed this.

But if it was the fear of persecution that the former minister took his own life, what tells us about today’s Russia?

“The most dramatic part of this, with all the reconstruction that has taken place in Russia in recent years, is that a high-level government official (he kills himself) because he has no other way to get out of the system,” says Nina Khrushcheva, Professor of International Affairs in New York.

“He was probably afraid that he would receive a dozen years of imprisonment when he was under investigation and that his family would suffer strongly. So there was no way out. I immediately thought about Serga Orthikon, one of Stalin ministers who (killed himself) in 1937, because he didn’t think when he was thinking about 1937.”

The death of Raman Starovoit may have created headlines in newspapers. But this “almost unique phenomenon in the history of Russian” has received minimal coverage on state television.

This may be because the Kremlin recognizes the power of television to form public opinion. In Russia, television is more influential than newspapers. So, when it comes to television, the authorities are usually more careful and careful with the messages.

The Bulletin of the Main Evening News on Monday in Russia-1 included a four-minute report on Putin’s appointment, which appointed the new Minister of Transport Andrei Mikitin.

It was not mentioned at all that the previous transport minister was fired. Either that he was found dead.

Only forty minutes later, by the end of the newsletter, the presenter briefly mentioned the death of Raman Starovoit.

The news report devoted it to all 18 seconds, which means that most Russians probably won’t consider Monday’s dramatic events as significant development.

This is a different story for the political elite. For ministers, governors and other Russian officials who sought to become part of the political system, what happened to Starovoit will serve as a warning.

“Unlike earlier, if you could get these jobs, get rich, overcome from the regional level to the federal level, today it is definitely not a career if you want to stay alive,” says Nina Khrushcheva.

“To begin with, there is not only no increased mobility, but even a decrease in mobility ends in death.”

This is a reminder of the danger that stems from the fall of the system.