A court in Kursk has sentenced former regional Governor Alexei Smirnov to 14 years in a maximum-security prison and fined him 400 million rubles, the regional court’s press service said.
The court also stripped Smirnov of his title as an Honored Worker of the Housing and Utilities Sector of the Russian Federation and ordered the confiscation of 20.9 million rubles.
Smirnov was convicted on two counts of large-scale bribery, including in connection with the construction of defensive fortifications along the border with Ukraine. He reached a plea agreement with investigators and admitted to receiving more than 20 million rubles in bribes from businessmen who held construction contracts.
Prosecutors had sought a 15-year sentence. Smirnov said the request was out of all proportion given the plea agreement, adding that he did not think he even had that many years left to live.
Smirnov led the Kursk Region from May to December 2024. He was detained in Moscow in April 2025. Authorities detained his former deputy Alexei Dedov and Dmitry Shubin on the same day; security officials described Shubin as an intermediary in the transfer of bribes.
Construction of two defensive lines in the region was completed in October 2022. Smirnov, who was then serving as first deputy governor under Roman Starovoyt, and Dedov together received 12.9 million rubles in exchange for providing cover during the renovation of schools and a lyceum, investigators said. Investigators say the officials received an additional roughly 8 million rubles from Maxim Vasiliev, a member of the Kursk regional legislature whose company built defensive fortifications in the Glushkovsky District along the border with Ukraine.
In July 2025, Starovoyt was found dead in Moscow. Investigators said he had died by suicide. One theory held that he was to have been the next person charged in the case involving the construction of defensive fortifications in the Kursk Region.
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