Russia has jailed a high protection official, the fourth in a month, state media reported on Thursday, increasing President Vladimir V. Putin’s largest shake-up of his navy management because the invasion of Ukraine greater than two years in the past.
A Moscow navy court docket ordered Lt. Gen. Vadim Shamarin jailed for 2 months on Wednesday on suspicion of “large-scale” bribery, state information companies mentioned. He faces 15 years in jail. Basic Shamarin was a deputy head of the Russian navy’s important commanding physique, the overall workers, and oversaw its communications directorate.
The detention of Basic Shamarin is the most recent in a collection of high-profile arrests which have coincided with Mr. Putin’s appointment of a brand new protection minister, Andrei R. Belousov, earlier this month.
Timur Ivanov, a deputy defense minister, and Lt. Gen. Yuri Kuznetsov, who oversaw the ministry’s personnel department, have been detained for a similar bribery cost in latest weeks. And earlier this week, state media reported that Maj. Gen. Ivan Popov, the previous commander of Russia’s 58th Mixed Arms Military, had been detained on fraud allegations.
The Kremlin tightly controls the justice system, and brought collectively, the corruption arrests sign Mr. Putin’s most aggressive effort to overtake his navy management because the disastrous beginnings of his Ukraine invasion in early 2022.
“Preventing corruption is deliberate work,” the Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, advised reporters on Thursday, rejecting the notion {that a} purge was underway. “There’s no discuss, after all, about any type of marketing campaign.”
Within the first two years of the warfare, Mr. Putin oversaw few publicly introduced modifications, not to mention arrests, of his navy management, regardless of widespread experiences of corruption, mismanagement and incompetence by his generals.
Along with his navy on the again foot, analysts mentioned, Mr. Putin positioned a premium on loyalty and sought to keep away from probably destabilizing personnel strikes.
However now, Russia’s Military is on the offensive alongside a lot of the frontline, whereas Ukraine struggles with shortages of arms and personnel. Having orchestrated a rubber-stamp re-election in March and an inauguration to a fifth time period in Could, Mr. Putin seems assured sufficient in his grip on energy and his navy edge to come back down harshly towards navy leaders who’ve fallen out of favor.
One of many Kremlin’s objectives seems to be exhibiting the Russian public that it’s taking critically the navy’s corruption downside, a subject that standard Russian bloggers who help the warfare have written about extensively because the invasion started.
Underlining that effort, considered one of Russia’s important state information companies, RIA Novosti, reported on Thursday that Basic Shamarin’s spouse purchased a $200,000 Mercedes S.U.V. in November 2022 — though his accessible monetary experiences present a family revenue of not more than $34,000 a 12 months on the present alternate fee.
Oleg Matsnev contributed reporting.