President Vladimir Putin dismissed Transport Minister Roman Starovoit on 7 July, ending the former Kursk governor’s tenure after just fourteen months. A presidential decree offered no explanation and appointed former deputy minister and ex-Novgorod governor Andrei Nikitin as acting head of the ministry. Hours later, Starovoit, 53, was discovered with a gunshot wound near his Tesla in the Odintsovo district west of Moscow. The Russian Investigative Committee said a pistol registered to him lay beside the body and that suicide is the leading theory, though a full inquiry is underway. Domestic media and political analysts linked both the dismissal and the death to an ongoing corruption investigation in the Kursk border region, where Starovoit governed from 2018 to 2024. The probe focuses on whether 19.4 billion roubles (about $246 million) allocated for fortifying the frontier with Ukraine were embezzled; his successor Alexei Smirnov was arrested in April and is reported to have implicated the former governor. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the incident “shocked” officials and confirmed Putin had been briefed immediately. On 8 July the State Duma formally approved Nikitin as transport minister; he told lawmakers that tackling persistent airport disruptions would be among his first tasks. Starovoit’s death is the first suspected suicide of a Russian cabinet-level official since 1991, underscoring intensifying pressure on senior figures amid the war in Ukraine and a spate of high-profile corruption cases. The Investigative Committee continues to examine the circumstances.