INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
A funeral for previous Transportation Minister Roman Starovoit was kept in St
Petersburg on Friday, days after he died in an evident suicide outside Moscow following his surprise dismissal by President Vladimir
Putin.Leningrad area Governor Alexander Drozdenko, along with other federal and regional authorities who had dealt with Starovoit for many
years, went to the morning ceremony, according to the local news outlet Fontanka.Video released by the Kommersant service paper showed a
small crowd gathered at Smolensky Cemetery on the citysVasilyevsky Island, where a hearse flanked by four pallbearers waited to bring the
ex-minister to his burial site.Fontanka reported that Starovoit was buried near the Chapel of St
Ksenia, a location of the historic cemetery scheduled by authorities for cultural and government figures.Born in the city of Kursk 53 years
ago, Starovoit invested much of his youth in the Leningrad region.His funeral happened one day after a funeral in Moscow, which numerous
senior Kremlin officials participated in
Putin did not attend but sent a wreath, according to the Kremlin.Starovoit was found dead with a gunshot wound near a parking lot beyond
Moscow on Monday, simply hours after the Russian president dismissed him without description
Cops private investigators are treating the case as a believed suicide.Starovoit had actually apparently left a two-word farewell message in
a Transportation Ministry work chat before his death, stating It was an honor, Kommersantreported Thursday, mentioning an unnamed deputy of
The late authorities was dismissed over a year after being selected transport minister
Before that consultation, he served as the governor of the southwestern Kursk region from 2018 to May 2024
Starovoitsremoval and subsequent death have fueled speculation that he might have been facing prosecution as part of an ongoing examination
into supposed corruption in the building of border defenses in the Kursk region, which saw a major Ukrainian incursion last August.While he
had not been formally implicated in that examination, Russian media mentioned unnamed sources as saying that suspects in the event,
including his predecessor in the Kursk area, Alexei Smirnov, had actually just recently testified against him.
