Russia Detains Senior Basic, Widening Navy Purge

Russian safety brokers detained a senior basic early Tuesday, widening a purge of the nation’s sprawling Protection Ministry amid President Vladimir V. Putin’s broader shake-up of his authorities.

Lt. Gen. Yuri Kuznetsov, who oversaw the ministry’s personnel division, was detained on an accusation of “large-scale” bribery, Russia’s Investigative Committee, a federal regulation enforcement company, mentioned in an announcement on Tuesday.

His detention got here after Mr. Putin unexpectedly eliminated his long-serving protection minister, Sergei Ok. Shoigu, from his submit and changed him with a member of his financial crew.

Prosecutors mentioned Basic Kuznetsov acquired a bribe from “business pursuits” between 2021 and 2023, when he labored on the safety of state secrets and techniques on the Armed Forces’ Basic Employees. The prosecutors claimed that safety brokers found money equal to $1 million and luxurious objects throughout a search of Basic Kuznetsov’s dwelling.

A profession officer, Basic Kuznetsov labored on the Basic Employees for 13 years earlier than assuming his submit within the Protection Ministry in 2023.

Basic Kuznetsov is the second senior Russian protection official to be detained prior to now month. A deputy protection minister, Timur Ivanov, was detained and charged in April with the identical crime, “large-scale” bribery.

Mr. Ivanov was recognized for the extravagant life-style of his spouse and was extensively seen as a protégé of Mr. Shoigu. Mr. Putin’s broader reshuffle of senior safety posts this week signifies a concentrate on bettering the administration of Russian army sources, with a view to outlast Ukraine in a struggle of attrition. This concentrate on useful resource administration might partly clarify the federal government’s makes an attempt to indicate motion in opposition to graft.

Russia’s Protection Ministry has lengthy been extensively perceived as a hotbed of corruption. Some analysts have mentioned the systematic pilfering of state protection contracts was one of many causes for the Russian Military’s disastrous preliminary invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when nominally modernized divisions have been despatched into battle with outdated and inadequate tools.

In Russia, ultranationalist supporters of the struggle in Ukraine have blamed what they understand as greed and aloofness of senior generals for heavy army losses and meager territorial positive aspects.

Mr. Shoigu’s chief rival, the ultranationalist warlord Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, final yr seized on this fashionable discontent with senior command to launch a mutiny that got here inside 120 miles of Moscow, briefly shaking Mr. Putin’s maintain on energy. (Mr. Prigozhin ultimately backed down, and died a number of months later in a airplane crash.)

Distinguished ultranationalist commentators have greeted the arrests of Mr. Ivanov and Basic Kuznetsov, in addition to the demotion of Mr. Shoigu, with muted glee, suggesting high-level army corruption stays a galvanizing difficulty for the struggle’s supporters, in addition to a political menace to Mr. Putin.

Mikhail Zvinchuk, one in every of Russia’s most-read army bloggers, wrote on Monday that he hoped Mr. Shoigu’s demotion would result in “a complete audit and overhaul of all monetary fashions of the Protection Ministry.”

One other pro-war army blogger, Kirill Fedorov, who has half one million subscribers on Telegram, a messaging app, on Tuesday titled a video about Basic Kuznetsov’s arrest “Is it 1937 once more?,” a reference to Joseph Stalin’s brutal purge of generals and different members of the Soviet elite.