The deaths have been treated with scepticism for years by Western observers who have seen Putin increase his power and personal wealth while wielding control over oligarchs and officials.

Activist and former financier Sir William Browder, who revealed the Kremlin’s torture and killing of its enemies in the book Red Notice, estimated that Putin amassed billions of dollars.

Browder and other critics of the Kremlin responded with disbelief in March when Russian news agencies reported that another former Putin ally, Buvaisar Saitiev, was found dead after falling from a window.

“Windows are very dangerous in Russia,” Browder quipped on social media at the time.

Adding to the doubts about the circumstances leading up to Starovoit’s death, former Russian defence minister Andrei Kartapolov – who now leads a defense committee in the Russian parliament – told news outlet RTVI that Starovoit had killed himself “quite a while ago”.

Some Russian media alleged the former minister may have taken his life before the publication of Putin’s decree firing him.

Starovoit was last seen in public on Sunday morning, Moscow time, when an official video from the ministry’s situation room featured him receiving reports from officials.

An official order releasing Starovoit from his post was published on the Kremlin’s website on Monday morning, without giving a reason for his removal.

Russian media have reported that Starovoit’s dismissal could have been linked to an investigation into the embezzlement of state funds allocated for building fortifications in the Kursk region, where he served as governor before becoming transportation minister.

The alleged corruption has been cited as one of the reasons Russia failed to hold the region in the face of a Ukrainian attack in August 2024, in a humiliating setback.

While Russian news agencies often report the deaths of former officials and ministers as suicide, critics of the Kremlin attribute the deaths to the security services acting on orders.

Ivan Stupak, a Ukrainian military analyst and former security service officer, told the Kyiv Independent on the weekend that the oil executive Badalov’s death was probably an example of the security agencies at work.

“They can pressure a person in one way or another. It’s a well-known tactic – either you kill yourself, and your family is left in peace with what they have, or they start arrests, imprisonments, and leave everyone destitute,” he told the publication.

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Russian authorities have also stepped up the prosecution of corruption cases.

On Monday, Khalil Arslanov, a former deputy chief of the military’s general staff, was convicted on corruption charges and sentenced to 17 years in prison.

Another former deputy in the military, Timur Ivanov, was convicted on charges of embezzlement and money laundering and handed a 13-year prison sentence.