Russian safety brokers detained a senior common early Tuesday, widening a purge of the nation’s sprawling Protection Ministry amid President Vladimir V. Putin’s broader shake-up of his authorities.
Lt. Gen. Yuri Kuznetsov, who oversaw the ministry’s personnel division, was detained on an accusation of “large-scale” bribery, Russia’s Investigative Committee, a federal regulation enforcement company, stated in a press release on Tuesday.
His detention got here after Mr. Putin unexpectedly eliminated his long-serving protection minister, Sergei Ok. Shoigu, from his put up and changed him with a member of his financial staff.
Prosecutors stated Common Kuznetsov acquired a bribe from “business pursuits” between 2021 and 2023, when he labored on the safety of state secrets and techniques on the Armed Forces’ Common Employees. The prosecutors claimed that safety brokers found money equal to $1 million and luxurious objects throughout a search of Common Kuznetsov’s residence.
A profession officer, Common Kuznetsov labored on the Common Employees for 13 years earlier than assuming his put up within the Protection Ministry in 2023.
Common Kuznetsov is the second senior Russian protection official to be detained up to now month. A deputy protection minister, Timur Ivanov, was detained and charged in April with the identical crime, “large-scale” bribery.
Mr. Ivanov was identified for the extravagant life-style of his spouse and was extensively seen as a protégé of Mr. Shoigu. Mr. Putin’s broader reshuffle of senior safety posts this week signifies a deal with enhancing the administration of Russian army sources, so as to outlast Ukraine in a warfare of attrition. This deal with useful resource administration might partly clarify the federal government’s makes an attempt to point out motion in opposition to graft.
Russia’s Protection Ministry has lengthy been extensively perceived as a hotbed of corruption. Some analysts have stated the systematic pilfering of state protection contracts was one of many causes for the Russian Military’s disastrous preliminary invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when nominally modernized divisions have been despatched into battle with outdated and inadequate gear.
In Russia, ultranationalist supporters of the warfare in Ukraine have blamed what they understand as greed and aloofness of senior generals for heavy army losses and meager territorial features.
Mr. Shoigu’s chief rival, the ultranationalist warlord Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, final 12 months seized on this widespread discontent with senior command to launch a mutiny that got here inside 120 miles of Moscow, briefly shaking Mr. Putin’s maintain on energy. (Mr. Prigozhin ultimately backed down, and died a number of months later in a airplane crash.)
Outstanding ultranationalist commentators have greeted the arrests of Mr. Ivanov and Common Kuznetsov, in addition to the demotion of Mr. Shoigu, with muted glee, suggesting high-level army corruption stays a galvanizing difficulty for the warfare’s supporters, in addition to a political risk to Mr. Putin.
Mikhail Zvinchuk, certainly one of Russia’s most-read army bloggers, wrote on Monday that he hoped Mr. Shoigu’s demotion would result in “a complete audit and overhaul of all monetary fashions of the Protection Ministry.”
One other pro-war army blogger, Kirill Fedorov, who has half one million subscribers on Telegram, a messaging app, on Tuesday titled a video about Common Kuznetsov’s arrest “Is it 1937 once more?,” a reference to Joseph Stalin’s brutal purge of generals and different members of the Soviet elite.
