⬛️ Minister's suicide rattles Russian elite
Hello and welcome to the second edition of our new English-language newsletter—your essential guide to Russian politics and economics. Written by Farida Rustamova and Margarita Liutova, it will arrive in your inbox every two weeks.
Our main story focuses on an extraordinary event for post-Soviet Russia—the suicide of a government minister. We have spoken to our sources in the Russian elite to gauge their response, and analyze what it tells us about the direction in which Russia’s political system is evolving.
We also look briefly at some other noteworthy developments:
Officials claim 210,000 men joined the army in the first half of this year;
Nationalization of a major gold producer spotlights growing risks for the minority shareholders of all Russian private companies;
Russia’s oldest and most important election monitoring organization, Golos, announces its closure.
⏳ This newsletter contains 2,170 words – it will take about 10 minutes to read.
Why did Russia’s transport minister kill himself?
The Kremlin was caught off-balance by the suicide of ex-minister Roman Starovoit, who had apaprently been designated as one of the scapegoats for Ukraine’s 2024 invasion of Kursk region.
The dismissal of Roman Starovoit as Russian transport minister was the first public announcement the Kremlin made this week—early on Monday morning. The decree’s laconic wording, and the lack of gratitude for Starovoit’s service, marked it as a humiliating dismissal, and everyone understood it meant the end of his long, and successful, career. It also seemed to signal that Starovoit was days, if not hours, away from arrest on corruption charges linked to the theft of money earmarked for fortifying the Ukrainian border while he was governor of Russia’s Kursk region.
However, a few hours later, a tremor of horror ran through the Russian elite when news broke that Starovoit, 53, had committed suicide. He killed himself in Rublyovka, an elite suburb in western Moscow that is home to many of Russia's top officials. The exact details are unknown, but Starovoit appears to have left his black Tesla in a Rublyovka parking lot, walked into nearby bushes, and shot himself in the head.
There was a palpable sense of shock following Starovoit’s death. Not only were people struck by the human tragedy, but also the way in which his death seemed to contravene the rules of the game in Putin’s Russia. Several of our sources, including top officials, said that they understood Starovoit's act as a form of protest.
Officials fired by Putin usually submit to their fate, and, if necessary, stand trial and obediently go to jail. But Starovoit took his fate into his own hands. It was a grim irony—or perhaps a deliberate gesture—that he shot himself with a gun he was given by the police service in Kursk for “helping to ensure the safety of citizens.”
Perhaps inevitably, Starovoit’s death was linked to a string of mysterious deaths since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine (the most recent occurred last week when an executive at state-owned oil pipeline company Transneft apparently fell to his death from his apartment window). Of course, it’s difficult to trust Russian law enforcement. But Starovoit was not associated with the energy sector (where these other deaths occurred), his body was found in a relatively public space, dozens of journalists attended the scene, and the gun he shot himself with was found nearby. It does not have the hallmarks of a state-sponsored assassination—the Russian security services prefer to act covertly. None of Starovoit’s former colleagues whom we interviewed expressed any doubts about the official version.
The cloud under which Starovoit had fallen in recent months was linked to the fallout from Ukraine’s invasion of Kursk region last year, in which Kyiv was able to seize thousands of square kilometers of Russian territory. We have previously reported on how Putin was incensed by this military failure. Despite this primarily being humiliation for Russia’s armed forces, and its security services, the only officials to have been punished have been from civilian agencies. Punishment has been meted out via a criminal case that alleges federal money allocated to Kursk for border defenses was embezzled. Arrests began in November, and several high-ranking civilian officials and contractors are already in jail. Allegedly, officials took kickbacks from contractors, and then contractors cut corners (for example, the “dragon's teeth” designed to stop tanks and other vehicles were made of a cheap concrete that disintegrated in the rain and snow).
Outlets close to Russian law enforcement agencies have reported in recent days that Starovoit’s longtime former deputy (who later succeeded him as governor in Kursk) had testified against him. According to the Kommersant newspaper, Starovoit was in line to be portrayed by investigators as the architect of the corruption scheme, and to face charges that carried a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
Starovoit is often described as a man close to the billionaire Rotenberg brothers, longtime judo buddies of Putin, who control virtually all major infrastructure construction projects in Russia. But the relationship was more like a boss-client relationship, and, as such, not strong enough for the Rotenbergs to step in to save Starovoit from the all-powerful security services.
In recent years, criminal cases against high-ranking officials have been seen by the Russian elite as purely political. So, many of our sources spoke about Starovoit’s decision with sympathy—even respect. “The man was eager to protect his honor,” said one of our government sources. “My first thought was that he died undefeated,” added another government source.
Starovoit's suicide also revealed some of the current tensions within the political system. Russian officials can no longer flee their problems by emigrating, and living quietly abroad. This is not just a result of Western sanctions: officials are de facto banned from leaving the country. Many of our sources have complained that they are trapped.
“Strange as it may seem, Starovoit has shown us a way out,” said a third government source.
Prior to the war in Ukraine, convictions of high-ranking officials—a sign of the system beginning to consume itself—were extremely rare. Nor did they begin immediately after the full-scale invasion. Apparently, there was an informal moratorium on such cases before the 2024 presidential elections. Nevertheless, there were some signals of what was to come: the billionaire Magomedov brothers, close to former President Dmitry Medvedev, were each jailed for almost 20 years in the fall of 2022. The following year, the former minister for Open Government, Mikhail Abyzov, was sentenced to 12 years in jail, and ex-governor Sergei Furgal was handed 22 years behind bars.
After 2024, everything changed. Putin approved an unprecedented purge of top officials in the Defense Ministry, followed by dozens of other cases against officials and businessmen. The very first victim of this wave of repression, ex-deputy defense minister Timur Ivanov, was sentenced last week to 13 years in prison (and this term is likely to increase as he faces new criminal cases). As in other major corruption cases, Ivanov's assets (worth 2.5 billion rubles) were seized. Starovoit would have likely faced a similar seizure, and a fourth government source suggested that a desire to ensure his family’s financial future might have prompted Starovoit to take his own life.
The increasing frequency of such lengthy jail sentences has instilled a fear in Russian elites that is similar to the fear that reigned during the Stalinist-era repressions, said the third government source.
“Handing out life sentences, the murder of [Wagner mercenary company founder Yevgeny] Prigozhin, and Timur Ivanov... it all makes you think that if you are caught in these millstones, you will be ground into dust,” he said.
The only untouchables are the security services. Nothing is known about the internal dynamics of Russia’s security agencies, but there is no public indication anyone has been punished for the Ukrainian invasion of Kursk or, for example, last year's terrorist attack on Moscow’s Crocus City concert hall. Our sources have said many times that Putin does not punish those who underpin his regime, and guarantee his personal security. “He believes that if he interferes, they will down tools,” said an official who previously held a high post in the government.
Putin quickly appointed one of his favorites, Andrei Nikitin, to replace Starovoit. After working in a Kremlin-linked think tank, Nikitin was made governor of Novgorod region in 2017 at Putin's personal behest. The region is home to one of the Russian president's favorite residences, and media reports suggest this is where Putin’s partner, former Olympic gymnast Alina Kabaeva, as well any children the couple might have, spend most of their time.
In February, Nikitin was made deputy transport minister, and, at the time, our sources said he was appointed on Putin's personal instructions. It seems likely that Nikitin’s arrival made Starovoit realize his days as minister were numbered. According to a fourth source in the government, Starovoit was upset by Nikitin's arrival as he realized this was a presidential appointment, and presaged his removal. Starovoit lived with this knowledge—along with the looming threat of criminal prosecution—for six months before his suicide.
The Kremlin has been unsure about how to react to the extraordinary event of a ministerial suicide. At first, they appeared to want to keep it quiet so that everything would soon blow over. During Nikitin's formal confirmation in the State Duma, no one said a word about his predecessor: neither the deputies nor the new minister himself. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to comment to journalists on the absence of public condolences for Starovoit from Putin, and the government quickly removed the minister's page from its website. State-owned television channels devoted less than a minute to news bulletins about the suicide.
Even officials who knew Starovoit for years were, therefore, nervous about expressing their feelings in public. “If you show softness, they will consider you a traitor,” said the former top official. Nevertheless, some government ministers still came Thursday to a public memorial service in Moscow for Starovoit. A source in the Transport Ministry said there was no ban on ministers attending, but they were asked not to talk to journalists. Notably absent was Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. Nor did Putin make an appearance.
The official confusion over how to react was encapsulated by a story run Thursday by state-owned news agency RIA Novosti that reported Putin had sent a funeral wreath to the memorial event. RIA Novosti withdrew the story two hours later, claiming it had been published in error.
The Kremlin clearly does not want Starovoit's suicide to tarnish Putin's image. And there is a clear risk that this could happen—after all, Starovoit shot himself immediately after the president fired him. Most likely, the Kremlin would like to maintain an illusion of “normality.” But this is deeply misleading, and unlikely to fool anyone in the elite. Under the pressures of war, Russia’s political system is gradually becoming much more dangerous—even for those at the very top.
Yulia Starostina contributed to this story.
Analysis in brief
More than 210,000 men joined the Russian military in the first half of 2025, Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of the Security Council, said on July 2.
Ex-president Medvedev has been in charge of overseeing military recruitment since the start of the full-scale war with Ukraine. The 210,000 figure seems reliable as it is similar to an estimate of Russian recruitment levels published last week by Russia analyst Janis Kluge. According to Kluge’s calculations, which are based on Russian budget data, 191,000 people joined up in the first six months of this year. We can, therefore, predict that about 400,000 people will join the Russian armed forces over the course of 2025—approximately the same rate of recruitment as in 2023 and 2024.
Chelyabinsk court ruled to nationalize Yuzhuralzoloto, one of Russia's largest gold mining companies, on July 11.
The company has been owned by billionaire Konstantin Strukov, a member of the ruling United Russia party, and the deputy speaker of Sverdlovsk region parliament (where the company operates) since the early 2000s. Prosecutors alleged Strukov violated the ban on combining public service and business—Strukov does, indeed, oversee industrial policy and natural resource extraction in his parliamentary role. However, such conflicts of interest are widespread among the country’s regional elites, and law enforcement used to turn a blind eye.
A few days before the trial started Yuzhuralzoloto’s minority shareholders discovered their shares had been frozen. Despite claims by the Russian authorities that they want to increase the capitalization of the country’s stock market, the actions of the security forces are a growing risk to any investors in private Russian companies.
Russian election monitoring group Golos announced Tuesday that it was ceasing operations under pressure from the Kremlin.
In a statement, Golos said its decision was necessary following the May sentencing of its long-serving head Grigory Melikonyants to 5 years in prison, which essentially criminalized the organization’s activities. There is now no independent group in Russia monitoring elections, or protecting electoral rights. “Unfortunately, justice does not always prevail — one must fight for it,” Golos said in its statement.
Farida – thank you so much for resuming your substack! Sometimes my English-speaking coworkers ask me if there's any reliable (free from whatever spin the Western media needs to put on at the moment) resource about Russia – I always point them to your pub.
Very sad to see such a proud and talented Nation reduced to this.