In the latest series of purges within Russia’s top offices, Lieutenant-General Vadim Shamarin, the deputy head of the army’s general staff, has been arrested on suspicion of large-scale bribery, according to Al Jazeera. A military court ordered Shamarin to be jailed for two months on Wednesday, citing TASS news agency. Shamarin also served as the head of the Ministry of Defence’s main communications directorate.
“On May 22, the court chose a preventive measure for Shamarin in the form of detention for a period of two months. He is charged with Part 6 of Article 290 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (receiving a bribe on an especially large scale),” TASS reported, referencing an agency interlocutor. The court’s decision can still be appealed. Shamarin faces a maximum punishment of 15 years imprisonment and a fine of one hundred times the bribe amount, which must be at least 1 million rubles according to the corpus delicti.
Shamarin’s arrest follows the detention of other high-ranking defense officials in an anti-corruption crackdown targeting lucrative military contracts. Earlier this month, Major-General Ivan Popov, formerly Russia’s top commander in Ukraine, and Lieutenant-General Yuri Kuznetsov, head of the Defence Ministry’s personnel directorate, were also arrested on bribery charges. In April, Russian Deputy Defence Minister Timur Ivanov, a close associate of former Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, was arrested for alleged bribery. Subsequently, President Vladimir Putin dismissed Shoigu and replaced him with economist Andrei Belousov after assuming office in May. Shoigu was criticized for Russia’s failure to capture Kyiv early in the conflict with Ukraine and was accused of incompetence and corruption by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the chief of the Wagner Group. Prigozhin died in a plane crash in 2023 after a ‘failed mutiny’ against President Putin.
On August 23, Prigozhin died in a plane crash in Russia’s Tver region, exactly two months after the ‘failed mutiny’ in Moscow. As part of the anti-corruption crackdown, three other individuals, including a friend of Ivanov, a construction company boss accused of paying bribes, and the former head of several companies subordinate to the Russian Defence Ministry, were also detained, according to Al Jazeera.
Shamarin was a deputy to General Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s head of the general staff. Although Gerasimov has not been accused of any wrongdoing, he has faced occasional criticism over Russia’s military performance in Ukraine. The Kremlin dismissed claims of a targeted purge, with spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stating, “The fight against corruption is an ongoing effort. It is not a campaign. It is an integral part of the activities of law enforcement agencies,” Al Jazeera reported.