Bringing the war home during the peak of Russia’s summer vacation season, Ukrainian drones forced 2,385 flight delays or cancellations, largely from Russia’s two biggest cities — Moscow and St. Petersburg. Disruptions are easing, a spokesman for the country’s aviation authority, Artyom Korenyako, posted last night on Telegram.

With half a million middle and upper-class Russian travelers inconvenienced by air delays and cancellations, Russian  airlines may lose as much as $250 million from the  turmoil, calculates Moscow’s Kommersant newspaper. As Russia’s social media filled with videos of vacationers sleeping on airport floors, President Putin fired his transportation minister, Roman Starovoit, aged 53.

A few hours later, Mr. Starovoit’s body was found with a bullet wound to the head. A pistol previously presented to him as an official reward was reportedly found next to his body. Russia’s State Investigative Committee said it was a suicide. Behind the chaos were overflights by Ukraine’s new long-distance drones. Flying 500 miles from Ukraine, drones hit and set on fire a military chemical plant, 65 miles northeast of Moscow.

Part of Ukraine’s strategy to bomb Russia’s military industrial complex, the drones hit the Krasnozavodsky Chemical Plant, manufacturer of solid-fuel rocket components, propellants, and explosives. Russian defense officials say they shot down eight drones headed for Moscow and three going to St. Petersburg.

Separately, explosions damaged the Eco Wizard, a liquefied petroleum gas tanker, docked at Ust-Luga, the main industrial port for St. Petersburg. Although the Transport Ministry said the damage to the one-year-old tanker was “minor,” Starovoit chaired a closed-door emergency meeting on Sunday about the vessel’s leak of ammonia. The next day, Mr. Putin fired him.

“Russian Transport Minister, sacked today, has shot himself,”  Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center fellow Alexandra Prokopenko posted yesterday on X. “No safe space for the elite: nobody guarantees anything.” In another blow to the transport ministry, a high ranking Russian Railways official, Andrei Korneichuk, collapsed and died Monday during a business meeting in Moscow. Russian news outlets said he died of a heart attack.

If Mr. Starovoit’s death proves to be a suicide, it would be the first for a senior Putin official in years. It comes amid a corruption probe into construction of defenses in Kursk, a region he governed until May 2024. Three months later, Ukrainian troops swept into Kursk, blowing up or driving around the fortifications.

In a humiliation for the Kremlin, it was the first time that foreign soldiers invaded Russia since World War II. The area was liberated nine months later and only with the help of soldiers from North Korea. Starovoit’s successor as governor of Kursk, Alexei Smirnov, along with his deputy, have been arrested as part of the fortification investigation. They are accused of embezzling about $13 million in state funds allocated for the construction. 

This summer, a series of high level military corruption cases are going through express trials. For Russians, the trials distract from a war where a summer offensive has yet to make progress and battle lines seem stagnant after three-and-a-half years of fighting. Last week, the former deputy defense minister, Timur Ivanov, was convicted on charges of embezzlement and money laundering and given a 13-year prison sentence. Yesterday, a former deputy chief of the military’s General Staff, Khalil Arslanov, was convicted on corruption charges and sentenced to 17 years in prison. Two confederates were found guilty alongside Mr. Arslanov: Colonel Pavel Kutakhov, and military retiree Igor Yakovlev 

Also on  Monday, Russia’s Investigative Committee announced the arrest of the former first deputy chief of the National Guard, Viktor Strigunov. He was charged with corruption and abuse of office.

While old-school corruption slows Russia’s military, Ukraine races ahead with the armaments of the future: drones. Over the last year, Ukraine has increased its monthly drone production 10-fold — to 200,000, up from 20,000, reports Defense Express, a Ukrainian news site.