Russia’s investigative committee says former Russian Transport Minister Roman Starovite has been found dead, apparently with a self-imprisoned gun pellet wound.

He was dismissed on Monday by President Vladimir Putin on Monday.

No reason was given for the dismissal of Starovoite and Deputy Corporation Minister Andrei Nikitin was declared shortly after his replacement.

The investigative committee said that it was working to establish the circumstances of the incident.

Starovoite was appointed as the Minister of Transport in May 2024.

Before becoming the Minister of Transport, Starovit worked as a governor of the Kursk region for nearly nine years by May 2024.

The region was partially confiscated by Ukrainian soldiers in an amazing aggressive in August 2024. Moscow only managed to get the Ukrainian forces out, although in late June, Kiev stated that it was still a small area of ​​the region inside Russia.

The successor of Starovoit, Alexi Smirnov, was only in post for a while. He was arrested in April and was later accused of embezzling the funds allocated for the construction of fortifications on the border with Ukraine.

According to the Russian outlet Commerce, Starovoite was brought as a defendant in the same case.

It is unclear that, in fact, Starovoite died.

The head of the State Duma Defense Committee, Andrei Kartapolov, told the Russian outlet RTVI that he died “long time ago”.

Earlier on Monday, before the announcement of Starovite’s death, Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov was suppressed by reporters whether the dismissal meant that Putin had lost confidence in StarOT on incidents in Kursk.

“The loss of the trust is mentioned if there is a loss of the trust. Such a word was not used [in the Kremlin decree]”Peskov replied.