A general and a Defense Ministry official have been arrested in a new anti-corruption crackdown in Russia.
A senior official of the Russian general staff and a soldier in charge of public Defense orders were placed in pre-trial detention, respectively for corruption and “abuse of power”, announced Thursday, May 23, the Investigative Committee, responsible for significant criminal cases in Russia.
The deputy chief of staff in charge of communications, General Vadim Chamarine, detained by a military court on Wednesday, is accused of having “accepted a particularly large bribe”, indicated on Telegram the Investigative Committee. He faces up to fifteen years in prison if convicted.
Serial arrests
At the beginning of the evening, the Investigative Committee also announced the arrest and placement in preventive detention of an official at the Russian Ministry of Defense.
“The head of a department in the public orders department of the Russian Defense Ministry, Vladimir Verteletski, is charged with abuse of power,” said this Source, assuring that he had accepted “unfinished work” in 2022 in as part of a public order, causing damage of more than 70 million rubles (710,000 euros at the current rate).
The defense sector has been plagued by corruption scandals for many years. But since the end of April, arrests have increased, affecting both the Ministry of Defense and the military command.
Before these two officials, Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov and Yuri Kouznetsov, in charge of human resources within the ministry, were arrested for corruption.
The Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, was himself replaced by an economist, Andreï Beloussov.
The Kremlin denies a “purge”
This change was justified by President Vladimir Putin by the need to “optimize” military spending, which had exploded with the assault on Ukraine, a campaign that was intended to be lightning but which has lasted for more than two years. .
Another Russian general, Ivan Popov, former commander of the 58th Army fighting in Ukraine, was arrested on Tuesday for “fraud”. He was fired last summer after, he said, revealing the difficulties Russian troops were facing on the front.
Corruption within the high echelons of the Russian army was one of the criticisms loudly made by the boss of the Wagner paramilitary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led an aborted rebellion in June 2023 and died in a plane crash. plane.
The Kremlin on Thursday denied any purge campaign, ensuring that it was a fairly classic anti-corruption operation. “The fight against corruption is continuous work, it is not a campaign” of purges, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov assured the press. “This is part of what our law enforcement does.”
