Russia has detained the deputy head of the Russian army’s general staff, Lieutenant-General Vadim Shamarin, on suspicion of large-scale bribe-taking, Russian media reported on Thursday.
It is the fourth arrest of a high-ranking defense figure in the space of a month, starting on April 23 when then-Russian deputy minister of defense Timur Ivanov was placed in pretrial detention for suspected bribe-taking.
Since then, Lieutenant-General Yuri Kuznetsov, head of personnel at the ministry, and Major-General Ivan Popov, former commander of Russia’s 58th Army, have also been arrested.
Photo: Russian Defense Ministry Press Service, via AP
The scandal is the biggest to hit the Russian government in years. The arrests signal a major effort to stamp out corruption surrounding the awarding of lucrative military contracts.
Three other people have also been arrested — a friend of Ivanov, a boss at a construction company alleged to have paid bribes, and the former head of several companies subordinate to the defense ministry.
Shamarin is a deputy to Valery Gerasimov, head of the general staff. Gerasimov has not been accused of any wrongdoing, though he has at times faced harsh criticism over the performance of Russia’s military in the war in Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin this month removed long-serving Sergei Shoigu as defense minister, replacing him with economist and former Russian deputy prime minister Andrei Belousov.
The appointment of Belousov, who has no army experience, was widely seen as a move to harness Russia’s war economy more effectively to the needs of the military, and to eliminate wastage and corruption in defense spending.
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