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Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s high-level military purge of his top officials continued on Thursday with the arrest of the country’s former Deputy Defense Minister Pavel Popov.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said a fraud case had been opened against Popov, 67, who was removed from his post in June after 11 years in the position.
The former deputy defense minister is the latest high-level official linked to former Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to be caught up in corruption investigations. He faces up to 10 years in jail. A video published by state-run news agency Tass showed Popov being taken to a Moscow court in handcuffs.
Eight military officials have been arrested since April in what has been described as a “cleansing” of the Russian Ministry of Defense, which includes the dismissal of Putin’s long-serving Defense Minister Shoigu in May. Putin replaced him with economist Andrei Belousov.
Newsweek has contacted Russia’s Defense Ministry for comment by email.
Popov is accused of misusing resources meant for a military theme park near Moscow, called Patriot Park, between 2021 and 2024.
“Now this is, of course, a blow to Shoigu,” Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center and founder of R.Politik: Reality of Russian Politics, a political analysis firm, said on her Telegram channel of Popov’s arrest.
A number of prominent military officials have been detained in recent months, including former Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov, who was arrested on April 23 on suspicion of taking bribes.
Vladimir Verteletsky, a defense ministry official, was arrested in May, accused of taking a bribe in relation to “work that was not carried out” under a government contract in 2022, according to Russia’s Investigative Committee.
Vadim Shamarin, deputy chief of the Russian General Staff, was also detained in May “in connection with the case of alleged fraud,” Russian newspaper Kommersant reported. Shamarin is reported to be a top aide to Russia’s top general, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, and had served as deputy chief of the Russian General Staff since 2021.
Yuri Kuznetsov, the head of the Russia’s Defense Ministry’s personnel department, was also detained in May on suspicion of taking a bribe, while Major General Ivan Popov, who had headed Russia’s 58th Army, was “arrested on suspicion of fraud,” state news agency Tass reported on May 21.
In late July, Andrei Belkov, the director of the Defense Ministry’s Military Construction Company, was accused of abuse of power in the execution of a state defense order, Kommersant reported, citing security agency sources. He was detained for purchasing a tomograph at an inflated price while he was the head of another military organization under the defense ministry—the Main Military Construction Directorate for Special Facilities.
Andrei Soldatov, a leading expert on Russia’s security services, told Newsweek this month that the arrests were likely ordered by Putin himself.
“The FSB and the Investigative Committee do not initiate such investigations/repression—it’s done on the orders coming from the very top, i.e. the administration of the president,” Soldatov said.
“The role of the FSB [Federal Security Service] is to provide compromising material and squeeze more from the arrested during their interrogations,” he said, adding that Russia’s FSB “acts on an ‘object principle.'”
This means FSB officials “work meticulously on the object that needs to be cleansed or put under control,” Soldatov said.
“It could be a region, or a ministry, as with the [Russian Ministry of Defense]—usually, they detain one of several deputies, so they could be interrogated about their superiors and colleagues—that, it is believed, makes sure the ‘object’ is firmly under Kremlin control,” Soldatov added.
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