Removing a long-time defense minister from his post is nothing out of the ordinary. Arresting five of his senior staff, however, is clearly more than just a search for fresh blood \u2014 especially in Vladimir Putin\u2019s Russia. <\/p>\n
After the shock ouster, two weeks ago, of Sergei Shoigu as the minister for defense, a wave of arrests has gutted the defense ministry\u2019s top brass under the guise of an anti-corruption campaign. <\/p>\n
The timing is as intriguing as the arrests and reshuffle. After almost three years of failure on the battlefields in Ukraine, Russia has just gained the upper hand. It has, in recent weeks, launched a largely successful offensive in the north, toward Kharkiv, coupled with victories in the Donbas region in the east, too. <\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s crippling manpower shortage and dwindling ammunition supplies \u2014 exacerbated by months of stalling in the US Congress to approve a military support package \u2014 have also helped reverse Russia\u2019s fortunes. <\/p>\n
So the question then is, why shake up the ministry in charge of winning the war now? <\/p>\n
Hanging over this shake-up is the ghost of Yevgeny Prigozhin, boss of the Wagner mercenary group, who was also formerly known as \u201cPutin\u2019s Chef.\u201d <\/p>\n
Before his death, he had expressed hatred for Shoigu and Russia\u2019s top general, Valery Gerasimov, through profanity-laden tirades, accusing them and the ministry of corruption and incompetence. <\/p>\n
Prigozhin led a mutiny on Moscow that was supposed to end with the overthrow of Shoigu and Gerasimov. Instead, he put the president in an awkward position and challenged his authority. Putin responded by describing Prigozhin as a traitor and stripped him of his assets, all before he died in a suspicious plane crash, alongside his most senior advisers. <\/p>\n
Since then, Putin has kept the inefficiencies of the ministry\u2019s weapons procurement, as well as its bungled invasion of Ukraine and corruption allegations, out of the public eye, keen to show he would not make any knee-jerk reactions following the mutiny. Doing so might question his authority and strength to the Russian people. <\/p>\n
Putin was likely awaiting his reelection by the Russian people in March before making moving in on the defense ministry. The changes came shortly after Victory Day celebrations on May 9, which Putin and Shoigu attended, side by side, in a seemingly amicable appearance. <\/p>\n
Despite his removal as defense minister, Shoigu will remain in Putin\u2019s orbit after being moved sideways to a new role as secretary of the security council. <\/p>\n
Putin\u2019s interest is in keeping his house in order but, more pressingly, achieving victory in Ukraine. The defense ministry is central to how that war ends. <\/p>\n
With Putin installing a civilian economist, Andrey Belousov, as the new defense minister, he has signaled he wants the ministry, with its vast budget, to procure weapons more quickly and economically. <\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s 2024 budget shows it is seeking to spend 6% of GDP on defense, the highest in modern Russian history, and will outpace social spending \u2014 a sign of the country\u2019s transition to a wartime economy. <\/p>\n
Last Friday, Lieutenant General Vadim Shamarin, chief of the Main Communication Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces, was charged with \u201creceiving a bribe on an especially large scale,\u201d of 36 million rubles (around $393,000) from a factory that supplies the ministry with communications equipment. In exchange, he is alleged to have awarded the company lucrative government contracts. <\/p>\n
Shamarin has pleaded not guilty, according to Russian state media. <\/p>\n
Russian state media has also played a role in communicating the Kremlin\u2019s crackdown on the ministry. Following Shamarin\u2019s arrest in May, state-run Ria Novosti reported that his wife had purchased a Mercedez-Benz GLE in 2018 for 20 million rubles (about $218,000) at a time when his income was no higher than $34,000. A separate report found her income that year was 872,000 rubles ($9,740). <\/p>\n
The highest profile of the five officials arrested was Timur Ivanov, the deputy defense minister. He was put under house arrest in late April, also on suspicion of taking bribes. <\/p>\n
Ivanov had become a focus of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, founded by Alexey Navalny, who was killed in a Russian prison in February. He and his organization exposed the lavish lifestyle enjoyed by Ivanov\u2019s partner \u2014 visiting invite-only jewelers, wearing couture clothing and owning a chalet in the chic ski resort of Courchevel in France. They questioned how she afforded such a lifestyle when her husband\u2019s salary was officially $175,000 a year. <\/p>\n
Russian state media reported that Ivanov maintains his innocence, citing its own source. <\/p>\n
For Stanovaya, the reasons for replacing figures such as Ivanov and Shamarin are simple. \u201cPart of Putin\u2019s logic is that you can\u2019t field someone in this position (as defense minister) where there are significant interests of the previous.\u201d <\/p>\n
To help clean up the ministry, Putin has appointed Oleg Savelyev, a former auditor at the Russia Accounts Chamber, as the deputy minister of defense. He will be \u201caware of the corruption that already exists in the defense sector,\u201d Komin said. <\/p>\n
Given the sweeping changes made by the president, rumors have swirled about the position of the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, Valery Gerasimov, the other target of Prigozhin\u2019s rants. <\/p>\n
Stanovaya said, \u201cThere are so many rumors now that he [Gerasimov] might be dismissed soon,\u201d but the fact he has so far been spared gives Gerasimov \u201ca window to start fighting for his own interests,\u201d she added. \u201cGerasimov is fighting against his enemies, trying to secure his future,\u201d Stanovaya said. <\/p>\n
Komin agreed that Gerasimov may keep his position for now, as Putin has said he does not intend to make any other changes. <\/p>\n
Crucially, Komin suggested that Gerasimov\u2019s luck may be that there lacks a position, similar to Shoigu\u2019s where he can publicly be moved aside without completely tarnishing his reputation, \u201cit\u2019s not a big deal to find the new guy. It\u2019s more a big deal to find the place for the previous guy.\u201d <\/p>\n
In Putin\u2019s Russia the president remains laser focused on winning in Ukraine, but recent overtures have shown that the supporting cast may change and the president is ready to be ruthless in his search of victory. <\/p>\n\n
Removing a long-time defense minister from his post is nothing out of the ordinary. Arresting five of his senior staff, however, is clearly more than just a search for fresh blood \u2014 especially in Vladimir Putin\u2019s Russia. After the shock ouster, two weeks ago, of Sergei Shoigu as the minister for defense, a wave of <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":19878,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-19877","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}