“The fight against corruption is a continuous process and not a campaign” of purges, Kremlin spokesman (presidency), Dmitri Peskov, told journalists, cited by the French agency AFP.
Peskov said that the fight against corruption is part of the work of Russian “law enforcement” agencies.
“This is in no way an organized campaign,” he added.
A Moscow military court today ordered the preventive detention of Deputy Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Vadim Shamarin on suspicion of corruption.
Shamarin, who was responsible for communications in the leadership structure of the armed forces, was accused of having “accepted a particularly large bribe”, according to the Moscow press.
Shamarin’s arrest is the latest in a series of arrests of high-ranking military officers for bribery, according to the US news agency AP.
Major General Ivan Popov, a former top commander of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, was placed in pre-trial detention on Wednesday also accused of bribery.
In April, Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov was detained for bribery.
Ivanov was a close associate of Serguei Shoigu, whom President Vladimir Putin dismissed as defense minister shortly after taking up a new term in May.
Lieutenant General Yury Kuznetsov, head of the Defense Ministry’s personnel directorate, was detained on bribery charges two days after Shoigu’s replacement.
The former minister was widely blamed for Russia’s failure to capture Kiev at the start of fighting in Ukraine in February 2022.
He was also accused of incompetence and corruption by mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, who launched a mutiny in June 2023 to demand the dismissal of Shoigu and the chief of the General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov.
Less than a month after the failed uprising of Prigozhin, who later died in a plane crash, Popov was dismissed as commander of the 58th Army.
Popov admitted that he had spoken to Shoigu about insufficient equipment, which had led to an excessive number of Russian deaths, and considered the dismissal a “treacherous stab in the back”.
Popov’s forces were fighting in the Zaporijia region, one of the most disputed areas of the conflict in Ukraine.
He was fired a day after the 58th Army command post in the city of Berdyansk was hit by a Ukrainian attack, killing a high-ranking general.
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