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 legislation enforcement company, mentioned in a press release on Tuesday.
His detention got here after Mr. Putin unexpectedly eliminated his long-serving protection minister, Sergei Okay. Shoigu, from his publish and changed him with a member of his financial group.
Prosecutors mentioned Common Kuznetsov obtained a bribe from “industrial 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 gadgets throughout a search of Common Kuznetsov’s house.
A profession officer, Common Kuznetsov labored on the Common Employees for 13 years earlier than assuming his publish 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 way of life 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 bettering the administration of Russian navy sources, as a way to outlast Ukraine in a battle of attrition. This deal with useful resource administration may 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 mentioned 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preliminary invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when nominally modernized divisions had been despatched into battle with outdated and inadequate gear.
In Russia, ultranationalist supporters of the battle in Ukraine have blamed what they understand as greed and aloofness of senior generals for heavy navy losses and meager territorial positive factors.
Mr. Shoigu’s chief rival, the ultranationalist warlord Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, final yr seized on this in style 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 aircraft crash.)
Distinguished 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 navy corruption stays a galvanizing problem for the battle’s supporters, in addition to a political risk to Mr. Putin.
Mikhail Zvinchuk, considered one of Russia’s most-read navy 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 navy blogger, Kirill Fedorov, who has half 1,000,000 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.
