Corruption scandals are beginning to pile up in Russia’s military leadership. This Thursday the arrest of Lieutenant General Vadim Shamarin, one of the deputies of the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Valery Gerasimov, was announced.
The Kremlin denied this Thursday that a “campaign” of purges against senior Army officers is underway. Dimitri Peskov, press officer for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said it is about the effects of the fight against corruption.
“The fight against corruption is continuous work, it is not a campaign” of purges, Peskov assured journalists. “This is part of the action of our law enforcement forces,” he added, ensuring that “it is in no way an organized campaign.”
The announcement of Shamarin’s arrest was made by the 235th Garrison Military Court, which reported that on Wednesday it had ordered provisional detention for him after being accused of receiving large bribes.
The Russian penal code provides for sentences of eight to fifteen years in prison for this crime committed by an official.
Born in 1971 in Taganrog (Rostov Oblast), Shamarin was, since 2021, head of the General Directorate of Communications of the Russian Armed Forces, a function that he combined with his position as Vice Chief of the General Staff.
In the last month, the Investigative Committee, which investigates the most serious crimes, and military judges have ordered the arrest of important officials in Russia’s military leadership.
These scandals occur in the midst of a remodeling of the Ministry of Defense. Last week Putin removed his friend and ally Sergei Shoigu as Defense Minister, and replaced him with economist Andrei Beloúsov.
On Monday of this week, Putin dismissed Deputy Minister Yuri Sadovenko, and replaced him with Oleg Saveliev, until now an auditor at the Russian Court of Accounts.
Among the members of the military leadership arrested for corruption in the last month is Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov. Also the chief of staff of the ministry that Shoigu led until recently, Lieutenant General Yuri Kuznetsov.
Ivanov was arrested at the end of April, accused of receiving a bribe of 1,185 million rubles (12 million euros at the current exchange rate). According to the investigation, he would have illegally helped several contractor companies of the Ministry of Defense and, in return, they would have carried out free construction work and repairs on his properties.
Kuznetsov, for his part, is accused of receiving bribes totaling 30.5 million rubles (310,000 euros) from businessman Lev Martirosyan, also detained. The general would have helped him sign state contracts and contracts with a military school in the Krasnodar region (southern Russia). The crimes would have been committed between 2021 and 2023, when the soldier headed Directorate 8 of the General Staff of the Russian Army.
This same week, Commander General Ivan Popov, who until last July led the 58th Combined Forces Army, which was fighting in Ukraine, was also arrested.
