President Vladimir Putin has dismissed Transportation Minister Roman Starovoit simply over a 12 months after appointing him, in accordance with a decree printed Monday on the Kremlin’s official web site.
The decree, which took instant impact, didn’t specify the explanation for Starovoit’s elimination.
Putin changed him with Deputy Transportation Minister Andrei Nikitin, who will now function performing transportation minister. In response to nameless sources cited by the enterprise newspaper Vedomosti, the choice to interchange Starovoit was made “a number of months in the past.”
Nikitin resigned as governor of the northwestern Novgorod area in February to imagine the deputy position.
Putin had tapped Starovoit, 52, to guide the Transportation Ministry in Could 2024. He beforehand served as governor of the southwestern Kursk area close to the Ukrainian border from 2018 to 2024.
Starovoit’s tenure as governor drew renewed scrutiny following Ukraine’s shock incursion into the Kursk area in August 2024. Since then, regulation enforcement authorities have made a number of high-profile arrests, together with that of his successor Alexi Smirnov, over alleged corruption within the development of border fortifications.
Whereas Starovoit has not been straight implicated within the ongoing police investigations, Russian media reported that the breached border defenses, constructed throughout his time as governor, value almost 15 billion rubles (round $191 million) and took almost three years to assemble.
