Star Metro - Minister's death spooks Russian elite amid corruption clampdown

Roman Starovoyt was buried in Saint Petersburg on Friday, with his family weeping at his open coffin before it was lowered into the ground.

The 53-year-old was found dead in his car on Monday in an elite Moscow suburb -- hours after Putin issued a decree to fire him, with no explanation.

Russian investigators say he shot himself.

Media reports said he was being investigated for corruption and could have been arrested within days.

While government departments sent flowers and some ministers attended a memorial ceremony in Moscow a day earlier, there was unease over the fate of Starovoyt, who had climbed the ranks of Russia's bureaucracy to a seat in the cabinet.

Many who came to the ceremony in Moscow refused to speak to AFP.

"It's a great loss. Very unexpected," said Valentina, a 42-year-old translator whose husband worked with Starovoyt.

"He was very active, cheerful and loved life very much. I don't know how it happened."

- 'Scapegoat' -

Starovoyt had been governor of Russia's western Kursk region before being promoted to Moscow, just a few months before Ukrainian troops captured dozens of border settlements in a surprise cross-border incursion.

His successor was arrested in the spring for embezzling funds intended to beef up the fortifications that Ukraine ended up slicing through with ease.

"They tried to make him the scapegoat... It's easier to put the blame on a civilian official," political commentator Andrey Pertsev told AFP.

The case is one part of a wider crackdown on officials alleged to have enriched themselves at the expense of the Russian army during the Ukraine offensive.

The crackdown is a Kremlin campaign that has ripped up previous norms about what is acceptable for Russian officials.

"There used to be rules, where people knew that once you climbed up high enough, they wouldn't mess with you," Pertsev said.

"But they do not work any more."

In a sign of how out of favour Starovoyt had become, Putin has not publicly commented on his death.

Asked if Putin would attend the ceremony in Moscow, his spokesman told reporters: "The president has a different work schedule today."

At the funeral in Saint Petersburg on Friday, two regional governors were the highest-ranking officials to show face.

- 'Holy war' -

While Putin has criticised corruption and vowed to stamp it out throughout his 25 years in power, his rule has been characterised by systemic graft, critics say.

The smattering of high-profile arrests has more typically been used to target opponents or come about as the result of infighting among those lower down Russia's chain of power.

But the military offensive against Ukraine has changed that.

"Something within the system has started to work completely differently," analyst Tatiana Stanovaya wrote after Starovoyt's death.

"Any action or inaction that, in the eyes of the authorities, increases the state's vulnerability to hostile actions by the enemy must be punished mercilessly and uncompromisingly," Stanovaya said.

In such a climate, it was inevitable that heads would have to roll over the Kursk failings.

Nina Khrushcheva, a professor at The New School, a university in New York City, said Starovoyt's apparent suicide showed the Russian elite was "scared".

The current climate is such that "it is impossible to leave the top brass", said Khrushcheva, who is also the great-granddaughter of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

"This is something we have not really seen since 1953," she told AFP, referring to Joseph Stalin's execution of a close ally.

To the Kremlin, the Ukraine military campaign is a "holy war" that has rewritten the rules of loyalty and service.

"During a holy war, you don't steal... You tighten your belts and work 24 hours a day to make the weapons you need."

That atmosphere, said Stanovaya, has created a "sense of hopelessness" among officials in Moscow that is unlikely to fade.

"Going forward, the system will be ready to sacrifice increasingly prominent figures," she warned.

T. MacDonald--SMC