Lower than 24 hours after Vladimir Putin despatched his protection minister packing after reportedly privately blaming him for disasters within the conflict towards Ukraine, any other most sensible Protection Ministry authentic was once yanked away from bed through masked safety forces.Counterintelligence brokers reportedly arrived armed to the enamel to detain Lieutenant-Normal Yury Kuznetsov, the top of the Protection Ministry’s workforce division, on bribery fees Monday. The Investigative Committee introduced in a press free up Tuesday that Kuznetsov is recently in pre-trial detention on large-scale bribery fees.The fees towards him, for essentially the most phase, stay unclear. Investigators say that from 2021 to 2023, whilst he was once serving as head of the eighth Directorate of the Normal Group of workers of the Russian Armed Forces, Kuznetsov accredited a bribe from business enterprises in alternate for “appearing positive movements of their want.”His arrest comes only a few weeks after Deputy Protection Minister Timur Ivanov went down on bribery fees in what was once extensively observed as a big blow to Protection Minister Sergei Shoigu.Shoigu was once changed through Putin on Sunday in a marvel transfer that sees him changed through civilian economist Andrei Belousov. The Kremlin has defined the transfer through pronouncing the rustic’s protection ministry will have to be “completely open to innovation” and Belousov suits that invoice. The Kremlin has insisted that Shoigu’s new submit as head of the Safety Council will have to now not be observed as a step down, however Bloomberg, bringing up unnamed resources acquainted with the topic, reported that Putin had misplaced religion in Shoigu’s skill to deal with the conflict amid corruption within the Protection Ministry. Final 12 months’s dramatic mutiny through Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin was once cited within the file as any other most probably explanation why for Shoigu’s dismissal.Within the wake of Kuznetsov’s arrest, Kremlin media has framed it as a part of an “anti-corruption purge” within the Protection Ministry, with Belousov now tasked with cleansing up Shoigu’s mess. “Some huge cash has come into the Protection Ministry, the price range has doubled on account of the [war]. And as we noticed with the arrest of Timur Ivanov, the placement with corruption is going past cheap limits,” former Putin adviser Sergei Markov stated in an interview Tuesday with Komsomolskaya Pravda.In a single fell swoop, it sounds as if Shoigu’s legacy has been cemented as one in every of wartime corruption and incompetence, whilst on the identical time, somebody uninterested with the conflict towards Ukraine dragging on into its 3rd 12 months can blame rampant corruption within the army as a substitute of the Kremlin.It’s no marvel that pro-war bloggers connected to Prigozhin had been celebrating the inside track of Kuznetsov’s arrest Tuesday. Prigozhin had famously referred to as for the ouster of Shoigu and everybody inside of his circle all through his short-lived rebellion towards the army final June, only a month ahead of he was once killed in a fiery aircraft crash extensively observed as an assassination.“Immediately into the fireplace,” wrote one Wagner-linked Telegram channel of the “sleazebags” Kuznetsov and Ivanov.
