It’s interesting when a senior defense official is arrested in Russia.
When four senior defense officials were handcuffed in less than a month, it wasn’t just a pattern. This is a purge.
The latest senior military member to be imprisoned is Lieutenant General Vadim Shamarin, deputy chief of the Army General Staff and head of the Russian Armed Forces’ main communications bureau.
He has been detained pretrial for two months on suspicion of large-scale bribery.
Russian Defense Ministry figures who have fallen out of favor over corruption allegations include Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov and the head of the Ministry of Defense Personnel Directorate, Lt. Gen. Yuri Kuznetsov.
There are also changes at the top of the ministry. In the latest reshuffle, Russian President Vladimir Putin Sergei Shoigu replaces defense minister after 12 years, with technocratic economist Andrei Belousov. The move was widely interpreted as an attempt by the Kremlin to make the Russian military more efficient and address corruption.
Mr. Shoigu was appointed Secretary of the Russian Security Council. As for Vadim Shamarin’s boss, Valery Gerasimov, he still serves as the Chief of General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces.
But the high-profile arrests at the Defense Ministry and General Staff have had a negative impact on the military leadership that has been directing Russia’s war in Ukraine.
There is a huge irony in all this.
Remember Yevgeny Prigozhin? A year earlier, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group had publicly criticized military leaders. He accused senior officials of incompetence and corruption and blamed them for Ukraine’s battlefield defeats. Prigozhin’s ire was particularly focused on Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov. He had asked to replace them.
The public feud spiraled out of control and eventually led to a 24-hour rebellion. Wagner fighters captured key military installations in southern Russia and began their march toward Moscow. This is an unprecedented challenge to the Kremlin’s authority. But its main purpose was to mow down the country’s top military officials.
It failed. President Putin sided with his military chiefs. Prigozhin lost his power struggle with Generals Shoigu and Gerasimov. Soon after, he died in a plane crash.
But a year on, a Kremlin-backed purge of the military has begun.
This tells us something about Vladimir Putin. The Russian president is unwilling to act under pressure. Order him to fire a minister or an army general, and he is unlikely to agree on the spot. He will not be told what to do.
That doesn’t mean Mr Putin won’t take action. At a time of His choosing.
What remains unclear is how far this purge of the Russian military will go. How many other high-ranking figures will end up in jail.
The former commander of the Russian 58th Army. Major General Ivan Popov was arrested this week on suspicion of massive fraud. He announced his dismissal last year after complaining to military leaders about problems on the front lines in Ukraine.
