Russia arrests another senior Defense Ministry official on bribery charges amid widespread excitement

A second senior Russian Defense Ministry official was arrested on bribery charges, officials said Tuesday, days after President Vladimir Putin replaced the defense minister in a Cabinet reshuffle that raised expectations of further purges at the ministry.

The Investigative Committee, Russia’s top state criminal investigation agency, said Lt. Gen. Yuri Kuznetsov, head of the ministry’s Main Personnel Directorate, was arrested on bribery charges and remanded in custody pending investigation and trial.

Kuznetsov is accused of accepting an exceptionally large bribe, a charge punishable by up to 15 years in prison. His home and other properties were searched and authorities seized gold coins, luxury items and over 100 million rubles (just over $1 million) in cash, the committee said in a statement.

On Sunday, Putin reshuffled his cabinet at the start of his fifth term, replacing Sergei Shoigu, who served as defense minister for 11 and a half years, with Andrei Beloussov, an economist and former deputy prime minister. Putin named Shoigu secretary of Russia’s Security Council, a role roughly similar to that of U.S. national security adviser, replacing Nikolai Patrushev.

Patrushev, a long-time aggressive and powerful member of Putin’s inner circle, was named an adviser to the president. Alexei Dyumin, the governor of the Tula region and often cited as one of Putin’s potential successors, was also named presidential adviser in the reshuffle.

While Shoigu, who had personal ties to Putin and accompanied him on vacations in the Siberian mountains for years, was given a new senior post, the future of his close entourage in the Defense Ministry under Beloussov appeared in doubt.

Shoigu’s deputy, Timur Ivanov, was arrested last month on bribery charges and was held in custody pending an official investigation. His arrest was widely interpreted as an attack on Shoigu and a possible precursor to his dismissal.

Shoigu is widely seen as a key figure behind Putin’s decision to send Russian troops to Ukraine in February 2022. He and Chief of the General Staff General Valery Gerasimov have faced intense criticism from Russian hawks over the military setbacks, including the failure to capture Kiev in the first weeks of the invasion and a hasty withdrawal of Russian troops from northeastern and southern Ukraine in the fall of 2022.

The shakeup comes as Russian troops press ahead with offensives in several sectors of Ukraine, seeking to take advantage of a slowdown in Western aid to Ukraine in what many observers see as a defining moment in the war.

The Kremlin sought to ease widespread confusion over the choice of an economist with no military experience as defense minister by emphasizing that Gerasimov, who is leading the fighting in Ukraine, had retained his post.

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