“Clean-up operation” continues
Russia’s deputy chief of general staff arrested
May 23, 2024, 11:42 a.m
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For weeks, scandals, dismissals and arrests have shaken the Russian military leadership. Now the Deputy Chief of the General Staff has been arrested. Experts agree: the “purge” in the Ministry of Defense has something to do with the dismissal of Minister Shoigu.
Another arrest of a high-ranking military officer has made headlines in Russia. This time it is Vadim Shamarin, the deputy chief of the army’s general staff. According to state news agencies, he was arrested on suspicion of bribery. His house was searched. According to the TASS agency, Shamarin is accused of accepting bribes on a particularly large scale. This is punishable in Russia by up to 15 years in prison.
He is the fourth high-ranking military officer to be arrested since April. At that time, Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov was also arrested for bribery “on a particularly large scale.” It was one of the highest-profile corruption cases in Russia since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
In mid-May, Lieutenant General Yuri Kuznetsov was arrested. The head of the ministry’s personnel administration is also accused of bribery. The popular pro-Kremlin Telegram channel Rybar suspected that the investigations could be related to his previous work in the Russian General Staff, where he was involved with state secrets.
Loyalty over competence
A few days later, the former commander of the 58th Army stationed in the Caucasus, Major General Ivan Popov, was arrested. He is accused of fraud. Popov was removed from his post in 2023 after he criticized Defense Ministry decisions in a speech. An audio recording of Popov’s speech, probably intended only for comrades or superiors, was released by Duma deputy Andrei Gurulev. Politicians and propagandists reacted outraged to the statements. The US Institute for the Study of War wrote after Popov’s arrest that it sent a clear signal to Russian military commanders that insubordinate officers would face severe punishment and that the Kremlin was prioritizing loyalty over competence.
On May 13, President Vladimir Putin replaced long-time Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu with former Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Beloussov. Shoigu was appointed Secretary of the National Security Council.
The current “clean-up” is the result of the change of office in the Ministry of Defense, said ntv correspondent in Moscow, Rainer Munz, last week. “People who worked with Shoigu are now being removed from the ministry,” said Munz. As the ISW wrote, they are now being replaced by business-friendly officials in order to prepare Russia’s economy for a long war.