Death of a former Russian minister: the political elite in shock

The probable suicide of the Russian Minister of Transport, novel Starovoït, announced shortly after his dismissal by Vladimir Putin Monday on a background of allegations of corruption, deeply shocked the political elite, where everyone fears to pay the cost of hunting profiteers. Its funeral is scheduled for Thursday but on Thursday morning, several hundred people, including members of the government and senior officials participated in silence in a farewell ceremony in the funeral room of the presidential hospital in Moscow, where the body of the deceased was exposed in an open coffin.

If the circumstances of the death of Roman Starovoït, 53 years old, remain vague, the Russian media mentioned an investigation for corruption targeting him, assuring that he should be arrested soon. Simited by President Vladimir Putin, he probably killed himself, according to the first results of the investigation, which is underway. “It is a great loss for us, very unexpected. We are all shocked, ”summed up with AFP Vassilissa, 42, the wife of a colleague from Mr. Starovoït.

“He was so active, happy, he loved life a lot. I do not understand how it could happen, ”adds this woman, tears in his eyes. After having deposited in front of the coffin of large bouquets of red roses, former colleagues of Mr. Starovoït, in dark costumes, went very quickly in their luxurious black cars. In a very heavy atmosphere recalling the funeral in the cult film “The godfather” of Francis Ford Coppola, other people interviewed by AFP journalists in the crowd refused to speak.

Vladimir Putin did not participate in the ceremony. The Starovoït affair is part of a recent wave of repression aimed at senior officials suspected of having illegally enriched during the Russian offensive in Ukraine. And according to analysts, if the corruption scandals have always existed in Russia, the military campaign has changed the rules of the political game.

“There were rules before, according to which people knew: once they rose high enough, they were no longer bothered,” said Mr. Pertsev. “But they no longer work.” While Vladimir Putin regularly promised to tackle corruption -being himself accused of having illegally enriched by his detractors -, the rare mediatized arrests were used more to target opponents or resulted in internal struggles between the lower ranks of power in Russia.

Since the offensive in Ukraine launched in February 2022, “something in the system has started to function in a completely different way,” said political scientist Tatiana Stanovaïa of the Center Carnegie Russia Eurasia, prohibited in Russia as an “undesirable” organization.

“Any action or inaction which, in the eyes of the authorities, increases the vulnerability of the state in the face of the hostile actions of the enemy must be punished without rity and without compromise,” said Ms. Stanovaïa, defining the new approach to power. For the Kremlin, the campaign in Ukraine is a “holy war” which rewritten the rules, confirms Nina Khrushcheva, professor at The New School, a New York University, and great-granddaughter of the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

“During a holy war, we do not steal (…) We tighten our belt and work 24 hours a day,” she sums up. Sign of times, several generals and defense officials have been arrested for affairs of embezzlement in recent years. In early July, the former defense minister Timour Ivanov was sentenced to thirteen years in prison.