Yuri Shvytkin, Deputy Chair of Russia’s defense committee, died at 60.

Question

Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Defense Committee Yuri Shvytkin has died The death of the 60-year-old politician was announced by State Duma Speaker Volodin. Shvytkin had three Orders of Courage and participated in the Special Military Operation

Answer 1

When I looked into this, EA Daily also had the same claim, seen here: https://eadaily.com/en/news/2026/03/23/yuri-shvytkin-deputy-chairman-of-the-state-duma-defense-committee-died-suddenly. Then when I dug deeper into this article it said that this statement was made on the website of the State Duma, a government website where if this was true it would definitely be reliable. However I scoured that website and couldn't find this statement, http://duma.gov.ru/en/news/chairman/. Furthermore, EA Daily posted this article in March, and on the State Duma website there was an overall lack of announcements made in March. There is also this X post https://x.com/sotanews/status/2036222432638345438 that claims the same information from the same source. The X post was from another news organization. Given that the topic at hand is a death announcement there aren't really any biases that could be at play from these various news sources.

Given that multiple sources claim this to be true I believe that it likely is, since they are citing a government source. However since I can't find the exact statement they are referencing, I can't guarantee that it is true.

Comments

Three provided sources is amazing in backing up your claim, however if you're doing research and cannot prove a claim to be false or true you shouldn't claim it to be true. Even when the original claim is providing government sources. Those can be faked as well as any, using the SIFT method should work better when trying to decide if a source for a claim is true or false. Also don't trust news sites that post on 'X' because you cannot be sure who's behind the account and furthermore cannot prove the claim to be true. Instead you should actually go to the news source to factcheck the claim made by the account, however in this case when looking up what 'SOTA' is a Russian news source. I'm not doubting that this source is a bad source, however translation can be lost and manipulated, like the game of telephone.

For: https://eadaily.com/en/news/2026/03/23/yuri-shvytkin-deputy-chairman-of-the-state-duma-defense-committee-died-suddenly. It's a tertiary source, claiming what a secondary source says. Also the website is full of AI generated ads. This one is in a different language as well bringing up concerns from before about translations being lost.

For:  http://duma.gov.ru/en/news/chairman/. Is good as well. It functions the same as a Google News and I couldn't find the source claim either.

---

The link that you sourced from EA Daily is considered a Russian-state controlled media outlet. Any news coming from this source, especially about events in the Russian government, should be taken with a grain of salt.

Answer 2

The link associated is a bluesky link which is not a government deemed credible source, so the information may not be true in that regard. However as I googled the title and began to dig deeper I found several sources claiming that this is true. Such as https://eadaily.com/en/news/2026/03/23/yuri-shvytkin-deputy-chairman-of-the-state-duma-defense-committee-died-suddenly

and

https://ua.news/en/world/v-rf-pomer-deputat-iakii-prosuvav-elektronni-povistki-ta-pidvishchennia-prizovnogo-viku

There are several X and Wikipedia pages posting this in addition but as we know anybody can post that so it may not be reliable. Since this is a recognizable government official in one of the largest countries in the world you would think that a more reputable source would be posting it. Thus the coverage is not great. The original post also claims that Vyacheslav Volodin announced the death but I found no clear statement that he said this of any source. So in conclusion there are articles that claim of his death but not of which are extremely reputable so I would say that this could be true and has not hit large news stations yet or it is widespread propaganda.