Latest news with #Izvestiya
Indian Express
07-07-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
Russia's ex-transport minister, fired by Putin, dies by suicide hours later
Russia's former Transport Minister Roman Starovoit has died by suicide, the Izvestiya news outlet reported on Monday, according to a report by Reuters. Earlier the same day, Russian President Vladimir Putin removed Starovoit from his post as transport minister. Reuters said it was not immediately clear what led to the incident. No official statement has been made yet. This is a developing story
The Irish Sun
07-07-2025
- Politics
- The Irish Sun
Russian government minister sacked by Putin amid Kremlin chaos ‘is found DEAD hours later' in latest mystery ‘suicide'
RUSSIA'S former transport minister has reportedly been found dead just hours after being fired by Vladimir Putin. Roman Starovoit, who had held the post for less than a year, was dismissed earlier Monday amid escalating turmoil in Russia's transport sector. 2 Former Russian transport minister Roman Starovoit was reportedly found dead at his home Credit: East2West 2 The 53-year-old was fired by Putin earlier today Credit: East2West Hours later, he was reportedly found dead at his home in the elite Odintsovo - marking another grim twist in the Kremlin's growing shadow of sudden deaths. There is no official confirmation at the moment, but major channels with links to the Russian security forces reported the cause of death as suicide, claiming the minister was found dead with gunshot wounds. The firearm, according to Russian media, was an award pistol issued to him in 2023 by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Unconfirmed reports suggest he was killed using his own weapon. Izvestiya, citing a source, said Starovoit had shot himself. The report was picked up by Reuters and Al Arabiya. News of the death first broke via NextaTV on X, posting: 'Former Russian Transport Minister, Fired by Putin Today, Found Dead.' Putin has replaced Starovoit with his deputy, Andrei Nikitin, who immediately called for a reduction in cargo bottlenecks and promised stability. Most read in The US Sun The Kremlin has not issued an official comment on Starovoit's death. His is the latest in a string of suspicious deaths of Russian officials, oligarchs and insiders since Mad Vlad's invasion of Ukraine began. Many have died in reported suicides, falls from windows or under mysterious circumstances, fuelling speculation about growing instability behind the Kremlin's walls. Starovoit's sacking came amid unprecedented flight chaos in Russia linked to Ukrainian drones, with thousands of services delayed or cancelled. A total of 485 flights were cancelled between Saturday and today, with 1,900 services delayed. Some 43,000 ticket refunds have been issued so far, with 94,000 people accommodated in hotels by airlines. Impatient passengers were marooned in overcrowded terminals, with worst hit airports being major hub Sheremetyevo in Moscow and Pulkovo in St Petersburg, where 7,000 stranded flyers were marooned this morning. But multiple regional airports were hit too, including in Siberia. The cost of the mayhem was put at £186 million - and rising. 'Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian airports are aimed at undermining air logistics,' said Telegram channel Kremlin Whisperer. 'Schedule disruptions, delays of hundreds of flights, suspension of operations at five airports - all this is becoming not just a tactical, but a strategic action aimed at shaking the usual rhythm of life and demonstrating the vulnerability of the system.' However, no civilian airport was directly hit in recent days by Ukrainian drones. Putin was said to have been displeased with technocrat Starovoit for failing to implement a crisis management plan to cope with the fallout from the war, including Western sanctions of plane repairs. The ex-transport minister was also fired amid unconfirmed rumours of a corruption probe. Starovoit was the governor of the Kursk region shortly before the Ukrainian Armed Forces took over a swathe of its territory last year. Read more on the Irish Sun More to follow... For the latest news on this story, keep checking back at The U.S. Sun, your go-to destination for the best celebrity news, sports news, real-life stories, jaw-dropping pictures, and must-see videos . Like us on Facebook at
Reuters
07-07-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
Russia's former transport minister Starovoit has shot himself, Izvestiya cites source
MOSCOW, July 7 (Reuters) - Russian former Transport Minister Roman Starovoit has shot himself, Izvestiya news outlet reported on Monday citing a source. Russian President Vladimir Putin fired Starovoit as transport minister on Monday.
&w=3840&q=100)
First Post
07-07-2025
- Politics
- First Post
Russian transport minister who Putin fired has shot himself: Report
Putin's decree gave no reason for the dismissal of Roman Starovoit after barely a year in the job read more Former Russian Transport Minister Roman Starovoit shot himself, according to a source quoted by the news outlet Izvestiya on Monday. Russian President Vladimir Putin sacked Starovoit as transport minister on Monday. Putin's decree gave no reason for the dismissal of Roman Starovoit after barely a year in the job. Starovoit was appointed transport minister in May 2024 after spending almost five years as governor of the Kursk region bordering Ukraine. The Kremlin said Andrei Nikitin, a former governor of the Novgorod region, had been appointed acting transport minister and it published photographs of him shaking hands with Putin in the Kremlin. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Asked about Starovoit's sudden departure and Nikitin's swift appointment, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: 'At present, in the president's opinion, Andrei Nikitin's professional qualities and experience will best contribute to ensuring that this agency, which the president described as extremely important, fulfils its tasks and functions.'
Spectator
02-07-2025
- Politics
- Spectator
Putin's stranglehold on the Russian press
Since Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, the Russian press has been slowly, methodically strangled, which has forced existential choices on newspaper and TV journalists. Twenty-one have been killed – beaten, poisoned or gunned down. Others, such as Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, highly regarded investigative reporters, have been forced into exile. Yet others, like the 'dear friends' of this book's title, have chosen a different path – to cleave ever closer to the regime. The authors tell the fascinating story of those choices and allow us a glimpse of why they were taken. In 2000, Soldatov and Borogan were employed by the political department of the newspaper Izvestiya, where they made new friends – slightly older and more experienced journalists, whom they envied for their access to people in power and admired for their intelligence and bohemian glamour. This group's ideas about Russia seemed a bit 'retro': Petya Akopov envisaged the country as a spiritual power, in contrast to the West's moral decadence; Zhenya Baranov had pan-Slav leanings; while their patron, Evgeny Krutikov, was obsessed with the secret services. But at the time these views appeared eccentric, provocative and certainly harmless. At first, Izvestiya was free enough to allow some criticism of government policy; but after barely six months, Soldatov and Borogan were squeezed out by increasing demands to toe the Putinist line. As they arrived at the office to clear their desks, they noticed a new employee – a nondescript, secretive man with no media experience. Just ten years after the 1991 putsch, the security services were back on the editorial floor. Moving from publication to publication, the pair found ways to get into print for most of the next decade. In the unlikely pages of Versia, the offshoot of an unscrupulous tabloid called Sovershchenno Sekretno (Completely Secret), they published an exposé of the official account of the Nord-Ost crisis, in which hundreds of hostages trapped in a theatre by Chechen suicide bombers were gassed by the security services. The FSB responded by harassing them and the paper for months, and this set a pattern. Subsequent employers crumpled under pressure from above. Each time the pair published a too-truthful report they'd be out on the street again. For some years, interestingly, the principle that the press should act as a check on state power still held true among their 'dear friends' from Izvestiya days, who helped them get articles printed. And for a while both Akopov and Krutikov were even happy to cooperate with Soldatov and Borogan on the website they'd set up, providing analysis and comment on Russia's security and intelligence services. In 2008, the authors' efforts to investigate the murder of their colleague Anna Politkovskaya got them sacked from their final paper. Bravely, they clung on in Moscow, writing books for PublicAffairs, their New York publisher, that were later translated into Russian. 'It felt as if we and our friends had discovered some sort of arrangement whereby we could coexist with the country's political regime.' One day, the liberals hoped, Putin would be gone and things would return to 'normal'. Their Izvestiya friends, meanwhile, had gone a different route, straight to the heart of the regime. By 2014, Baranov was a presenter for Channel 1, the Kremlin propaganda channel, pushing a narrative of Nazis in Ukraine and Nato aggression, while his wife crossed the barely discernible line between state and press to become deputy minister of culture the following year. Akopov is now known as the author of a triumphalist essay, published in February 2022: 'Putin has resolved the Ukrainian question.' It was swiftly removed from the internet when the Ukrainians stopped the Russian army outside Kyiv. All three are subject to sanctions. Why did these intelligent, well-travelled people agree to be the mouthpieces for state misinformation? Basically it was their only option if they wanted to stay in Russia and work as journalists. Financial need and family and health pressures weighed on them, as on anyone, and general lawlessness and corruption in Russia encourage conformity in all but the bravest. The emotional hangover of the Soviet Union is also considerable – nostalgia for the USSR's former status, the certainties of their childhood and family trauma working themselves out in complicated ways. Perhaps even more significant is another Soviet legacy – a profound cynicism that reasserted itself, as powerfully as ever, once Putin's direction was clear. Many of the propagandists are connected to Soviet dynasties such as the Mikhalkovs, who seem quite comfortable with telling lies in return for success and comfort. Trying to gauge the views of ordinary Muscovites, Soldatov and Borodan noted a collective determination to enjoy this rare moment of Russian prosperity without rocking the boat. Their interviewees often clammed up, snapping: 'We just want to trust our security services!' Yet almost before people had noticed, the Russia they knew had been transformed 'from a highly globalised and aspirational society to a dismal walled-in fortress'. In a flash, the moment when they could have chosen another future had passed.
