Lieutenant General Vadim Shamarin, head of the Main Communications Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces and deputy head of the General Staff, was arrested in connection with a criminal case of alleged fraud.
The Russian Investigative Committee has detained Lieutenant General Vadim Shamarin, head of the Main Communications Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces and deputy head of the General Staff, Russian media report.
According to press reports, Shamarin was arrested in connection with a criminal case of alleged fraud. The general was searched, then taken for interrogation to the Main Military Investigation Directorate of the Investigative Committee.
“On May 22, the court decided to impose a measure of coercion on Shamarin in the form of two-month detention. He is charged with part 6 of article 290 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ( acceptance of a bribe on a particularly large scale),” a court spokeswoman told the TASS news agency.
Recently, several criminal cases involving officials of the Russian Defense Ministry have been brought to public attention, notes Meduza. At the end of April, Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov was arrested in Moscow and accused of accepting bribes. In May, Yury Kuznetsov, head of the ministry’s personnel department, was arrested; he is also accused of accepting bribes. In addition, the former commander of the 58th Army, Ivan Popov, who criticized the Russian Defense Ministry, was arrested – officially, in connection with a fraud case, although observers do not rule out the political censorship.
The most visible symbol of his purges has become the recent replacement of the very Minister of Defense, powerful and loyal Sergei Shoigu, by a personal advisor to President Putin, economist Andreï Belousov. The official version – the military budget in this third year of the war against Ukraine continues to grow and must be better managed. Unofficially, the sources indicated rampant corruption in the Russian Defense Ministry.
