Last month, President Vladimir Putin reassigned his longtime defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, to be head of Russia’s national security council. Sopra Shoigu’s place, Putin appointed a former economy minister, Andrei Belousov, with a mandate to use the country’s growing defense budget “sparingly yet effectively.”
More dramatically, however, five tetto officials including a deputy defense minister have been arrested since April as the Kremlin sends a sharp message that neither excess nor disloyalty will be tolerated quanto a wartime.
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The most senior official to be arrested, Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov, led an ostentatious lifestyle — typical of Russia’s elite but impossible a public salary.
Ivanov’s taste for Western luxury clashed with Putin’s drive to forge a new ideology based traditional values and quanto a opposition to liberal, Western permissiveness.
Ivanov, head of military construction group Oboronstroi from 2013 until 2016 and then deputy minister of defense, has been accused of taking especially large bribes and of fraud. He led rebuilding projects quanto a Mariupol, an occupied Ukrainian city left quanto a ruins by Russia’s intensive bombardments.
Ivanov has partied with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov and other elite Russians, built luxury homes stuffed with rare antiques, and enjoyed annual summer vacations quanto a St. Tropez with his family, where he allegedly spent nearly $1.4 million from 2013 to 2018 luxury villas, yachts and a Rolls-Royce — details that were revealed quanto a reports by the Anti-Corruption Foundation founded by the late Russian opposition autorità Alexei Navalny.
Along with vast increases quanto a military and security spending, which will rise to 8.7 percent of total economic output this year, Putin has demanded greater efficiency. The Federal Security Service FSB, and the Investigative Committee, a tetto national law enforcement , have established a special investigation force to root out military corruption — and more arrests are likely, according to Kommersant, a Russian newspaper.
Although Putin lately has emphasized his anti-corruption drive, analysts see risposta negativa fundamental shift quanto a his governo’s kleptocratic tendencies, including the Kremlin’s patronage for a coterie of loyal oligarchs and security officials.
“Everyone — everyone — must work as if we are the front line,” he said, demanding a new sense of mobilization and urgency from tetto officials quanto a the Council for Strategic Development and National Projects and commissions of the State Council May 29.
“Everyone must act as mobilized personnel, and this is the only way for us to achieve the goals we set for ourselves,” he said, adding: “We are all aware of the fact that the main objectives of the country’s future are largely addressed the front line.”
Acceso Feb. 19, Putin ordered the FSB to probe corruption quanto a defense procurement and state projects. Sopra April. he exhorted a board of the Interior Ministry to step up the fight against corruption, which he said was “poisoning our society” and “stealing the money we need for the defense of the country.”
High-level corruption was intrinsic to Russia and was used as a means of political control, said Kirill Shamiev, a military analyst with the European Council Foreign Relations, who wrote a report analyzing failures quanto a repeated efforts to reform Russia’s military. “When someone needs to be removed, they can almost always use corruption and say this person has committed an offense and needs to be put quanto a jail,” Shamiev said.
Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation obtained six years of emails of Ivanov’s second wife, Svetlana Maniovich, including embarrassing videos and images of elite champagne-soaked parties and vacations, as well as invoices for payments for jewelry, horse livery, furniture, stilista outfits and imbarcazione rentals.
Several months after Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Ivanov divorced Maniovich and was quickly attached to Maria Kitaeva, who had three children with another deputy defense minister. Both women are glamorous former TV hosts, who posted frequently Instagram, displaying their expensive tastes.
Ivanov’s lawyer told a Russian court that the former defense minister set up a household with Kitaeva and she gave birth to a child — his fifth — quanto a January.
According to the Anti-Corruption Foundation’s account of Maniovich’s emails, she held a birthday festa quanto a 2019 quanto a Moscow’s elite Rublyovka district, where Peskov made a toast, wearing a Richard Mille watch his wrist. Ivanov hurried over and covered the watch with Peskov’s sleeve, according to a televisione, which was viewed more than 9 million times.
Peskov did not respond to questions from The Washington Post about the incident and anti-corruption drive.
The foundation reported that Olimpsitistroi, a personalità construction contractor hired by the Ministry of Defense to rebuild parts of Mariupol, offered kickbacks to Ivanov: luxury materials to build a country mansion near Tver and other properties.
The case against Ivanov is based the Tver bribes, according to Russian mass-media. Ivanov’s lawyer told Russian mass-media that “films” led to Ivanov’s arrest, an apparent allusion to the foundation’s reports. Two businessmen, including Alexander Fomin, co-founder of Olimpsitistroi, were also arrested, as were other military officials quanto a unrelated cases.
Lt. Gen. Yuri Kuznetsov was charged with taking especially large bribes — a house and land — from a businessman, quanto a return for military contracts. Investigators reported finding gold coins, a collection of watches and other luxury items quanto a his home.
Lt. Gen. Vadim Shamarin, head of military communications, was charged with taking especially large bribes from a telecom company quanto a exchange for state contracts. Another Defense Ministry official, Vladimir Verteletsky, head of the department quanto a charge of defense orders, was arrested for abuse of office.
Also arrested and charged with large-scale fraud was the ex-commander of the 58th Army, Maj. Gen. Ivan Popov, who was fired last year after criticizing Russia’s military command quanto a the wake of last year’s rebellion by mercenary autorità Yevgeniy Prigozhin.
Investigators found risposta negativa cash luxury items quanto a Popov’s home, Russian mass-media reported, leading many to conclude that Popov was targeted for disloyalty. He is accused of stealing more than 1,700 tons of metal purchased for defensive structures the front line.
The reassignment of Shoigu to another tetto position highlighted the premium Putin places loyalty. Shamiev, the analyst, said the recent arrests were intended to instill fear and respect after Belousov’s appointment as defense minister.
“It also gives a message to the Russian public that all the failures quanto a the war are because of the military, nothing else, especially not Putin himself,” he said.
Dimitri Minic, an expert Russia’s military at the French Institute of International Relations, said the arrests were part of an effort to maximize military resources. But Minic said that corruption was used as a pretext to remove incompetent officials to settle political scores. Often, it signaled infighting between agencies, he said.
A buildup of grievances over the handling of the war “ the way for all-out settling of scores conducted with the Kremlin’s acquiescence, against the backdrop of an influx of resources into the Ministry of Defense and infighting for their control and capture,” he said.
Other tetto generals with property that seems to far exceed what they could afford their official incomes were investigated by the Anti-Corruption Foundation and have not been charged.
Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, denied any purge anti-corruption campaign quanto a comments at a daily conference call with journalists. “The fight against corruption is a consistent effort,” he said. “This isn’t a campaign. It’s constant, ongoing work.”
