Russia has detained the army's deputy chief of staff, Lieutenant General Vadim Shamarin, on suspicion of large-scale bribery, Russian media reported on Thursday (23).
It is the fourth arrest of a high-ranking defense figure in the space of a month, starting on April 23, when Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov was placed in pre-trial detention on suspicion of bribery.
Since then, Lieutenant General Yuri Kuznetsov, chief of staff at the Defense Ministry, and Major General Ivan Popov, former commander of the Russian 58th Army, have also been arrested.
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 were also arrested – a friend of Ivanov, a head of a construction company who allegedly paid bribes and the former head of several companies subordinate to the Ministry of Defense.
Shamarin is a deputy to Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff. Gerasimov has not been accused of any wrongdoing, although he has at times faced harsh criticism over the performance of Russia's military in the war in Ukraine.
President Vladimir Putin this month removed Sergei Shoigu as defense minister, replacing him with economist Andrei Belousov, a former deputy prime minister.
The appointment of Belousov, who has no army experience, was widely seen as a move to harness Russia's war economy more effectively for the military's needs and to eliminate waste and corruption in defense spending.
Russia is in the third year of its war in Ukraine, where its forces have regained the initiative in recent months and made a series of gradual advances.
Putin said last week that he planned no changes to the General Staff because “combat work” was proceeding “successfully.”
Source: CNN Brasil
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