The death of a Russian Cabinet minister in a field near his posh home in a Moscow suburb has fueled wild speculation about how he died and what it means.

Roman Starovoit's funeral took place in Moscow on Thursday, with burial due in St Petersburg. Putin was absent - and did not send a wreath, despite initial Kremlin claims to the contrary.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio held "frank" discussions on Ukraine during Thursday's meeting, both sides said. The US criticised Moscow's lack of flexibility.

On July 1, former Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov was convicted on charges of embezzlement and money laundering and sentenced to 13 years in prison in a high-profile case that exposed rampant military corruption widely blamed for Moscow’s military setbacks in Ukraine.

The Kremlin's grip on the Russian elite appears to be closing ever tighter as two major figures of Russian business and security structures were detained in the past few days. Konstantin Strukov, a billionaire running a gold mining empire,

Russia’s transport minister allegedly shot himself in the head on Monday just hours after President Vladimir Putin dismissed him from his post, investigators said.

Vladimir Putin is convinced his country is strong enough to secure total victory in Ukraine. But the Russian leader is forgetting two crucial things about the current geographic dynamic.

Unlike before, when you could get these jobs, get rich, get promoted from regional level to federal level, today, that is clearly not a career path if you want to stay alive,” Nina Khrushcheva told the BBC.