RUSSIA The “great cleanup” of Moscow’s defense security services

After the defenestration of the historic minister Sergei Šojgu There are now four generals arrested in the last month, all accused of corruption. Since the time of Stalin, similar actions have not been seen at the top of state and military organizations.

Moscow () – The constant arrests and resignations in the Moscow Defense Ministry are causing a real internal earthquake in the Russian military leadership, after the defenestration of Minister Sergei Šojgu, long relegated to the outskirts of the Kremlin’s presidential administration . The “cleansing campaign” of corruption phenomena, which in reality are endemic at all bureaucratic levels of the institutions of power, seems more like an attempt to place the blame for the limited successes of the war in Ukraine on the generals. of the historic group of Šojgu, where two months of furious new offensives have allowed the Russians to conquer a few kilometers of the now desolate land of the Donbass, just when the great Moscow ceremonies and parades demanded the proclamation of imperishable victories.

In an investigation by The Moscow Times, the testimonies of two senior officials of the Moscow Government were collected in this regard, along with other sources close to the Ministry of Defense, all of them under strict anonymity. It appears from them that “a radical cleansing by the FSB of the Šojgu team is underway, a process that was largely predictable last year, after the grotesque uprising of Evgenij Prigožin.” With the new mandate of Vladimir Putin, the security services have received the “green light” to eliminate the entire leadership of the ministry, now entrusted to the “orthodox-Putinite” economist Andrej Belousov. More sensational arrests and resignations are expected before the “internal revolution” ends.

Checks and searches in the Defense Ministry building, on Moscow’s Frunzensky embankment, began even before the arrest of Deputy Minister Timur Ivanov, right-hand man of former Minister Šojgu, initiator of the “Putin terror” among the generals. According to internal sources, investigations began at the end of April, when Šojgu was still in charge, but it was already clear that he had lost all influence. Now in the ministry “there are more čekists [miembros del servicio] than military,” says the Moscow Times contact.

In the last month, four generals have already been arrested, all of them accused of corruption, and other high-ranking officers have fallen into the networks of the Investigative Committee; Since the time of Stalin, actions of this type have not been seen at the top of state and military organizations, and according to one of those interviewed, ‘at the end of the year hundreds of people will be arrested.’ The compromising materials “had been accumulating for years, waiting for the right moment to make them count,” but while Šojgu seemed untouchable, nothing had been leaked. The two structures of strength and power of the ministry and the FSSB had been at odds all along, and now the čekists had clearly and definitively prevailed.

Until now it seemed that the position of the security services was the most vulnerable, as all forecasts regarding the easy and sudden triumph of the “special military operation” in Ukraine had failed, but the blame was then placed on the ineptitude of the “second army of the world” under the direction of Šojgu, who turned out to be a “paper tiger”, according to the comments collected by the Moscow newspaper. Another of Putin’s main advisors, the Secretary of the Security Council, Nikolai Patrušev, also demoted after the inauguration of the new presidential term, was also removed by his own colleagues, although he is organically linked to the FSB, waiting to see how it evolves. the situation.

The impression from anonymous confidants is that “no one is really worried about the war in Ukraine, but everyone is trying to save their money and power.” The last detainees, General Vadim Šamarin and the head of the cadre office Jurij Kuznetsov, received bribes of more than 30 million rubles (300 thousand euros), while Deputy Minister Ivanov had broken all records with a bribe of more than billion. Russia failed to win the war not only because of the valiant resistance of the Ukrainians, but above all because of the implacable greed of its commanders.