Several months have passed since the beginning of the large-scale purges in the Ministry of Defense. The degree of corruption revealed is jaw-dropping — estimates suggest losses of more than $120bn — and yet Russian experts say it’s foolish to expect serious change.
The beginning of August was marked by new arrests and sensational revelations about the scale of thievery in the Russian Army. The radical-patriotic television channel Tsargrad indignantly reported that “the actual scale of corruption under [former Defense Minister Sergey] Shoigu was not in the millions but in the trillions of rubles that officials dishonorably stole from the Russian Army.”
The first insider whistleblower on defense sector corruption was the deceased leader of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeniy Prigozhin. In his zeal to “punish the thieves” he staged an armed rebellion which ended with his death and nearly cost Putin his power. Nevertheless, almost a year later, it is possible to believe that his ghost still haunts the system and that his demise triggered the start of the Defense Ministry purges. According to pro-government media, in his last meeting with Putin, Prigozhin handed over a folder containing the names of corrupt senior officials.
Regardless, on April 24, two weeks after Shoigu’s departure as Defense Minister, his close friend and deputy Timur Ivanov, who oversaw the construction sector in the department, was arrested at his workplace. Ivanov was charged with receiving huge sums in bribes, although independent media wrote that the real reason for his arrest may have been a suspicion of treason.
Ivanov’s alleged accomplices were then arrested, and on May 3, the FSB detained the head of the Defense Ministry’s personnel department and former head of the 8th Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Yuriy Kuznetsov, for trading in state secret clearances.
The arrests continued. In May alone, the former commander of the 58th Army, Major General Ivan Popov, an employee of the Defense Ministry’s Department for Providing State Orders, Vladimir Verteletskiy, and the head of the Main Communications Directorate and Deputy Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Vadim Shamarin, were detained in a case of bribery on an especially large scale.
On 25 July, the head of the Defense Ministry’s public-law Military Construction Company, Andrey Belkov, was detained on suspicion of abuse of state defense orders, and the following day, former Deputy Minister of Defense, Army General Dmitry Bulgakov, who, according to the media, lobbied in the interests of military food suppliers, was also arrested. He was accused of sending low-quality dry rations to men at the front.
On 1 August, the Interior Ministry opened a criminal case on the theft of 400m rubles ($4.4m) by the management of a company called Voentorg during the execution of state contracts for the Defense Ministry, and on 5 August it became known that the management of the Patriot military park had been detained on charges connected to facility’s construction.
The pro-war Telegram channel Rybar suggested that the purges were focused on three main areas of the Defense Ministry. The first is army logistics and the legacy of former Deputy Minister of Defense Bulgakov. The second concerns an audit of Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov’s areas of responsibility, including forestry, some of which is within the purview of the Ministry of Defense, and checking how many forests were “handed over the Chinese.” The third is tied to the investigation of Patriot Park.
On July 12, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy Mikhail Delyagin reported on his Telegram channel that the amount of embezzlement identified in the Ministry of Defense had reached 11 trillion rubles ($121bn.)
As an example of the real damage that such graft causes to the Russian army, take a recent revelation from Izvestia. As a result of the supply of low-quality bearings for Il-76 aircraft, five planes were decommissioned, preventing their use in the war. Abuse in the execution of state defense orders caused damage of 130m rubles.
The current purges give the appearance of a war against corruption, but this runs against the grain. Russia’s system of power could not exist without it.
Political scientist Stanislav Belkovskiy wrote in the opposition paper Novaya Gazeta Evropa that the new Minister of Defense Andrey Belousov can only be expected to steal a bit less than his predecessor, Sergey Shoigu. “The goal [of the purges] was not to eradicate corruption, but to try to drive it into a controlled framework,” he wrote, suggesting that Putin was not seeking to end the problem but to limit it. The sheer scale of graft needs to be toned down in the interests of the war, but the problem is endemic and beyond a cure.
Political scientist Abbas Gallyamov noted that over the years Belousov will create his own clan, which already includes representatives of other “Kremlin towers” — for example, the partners of Putin’s old friend Gennadiy Timchenko, and the coal barons Sergey and Anna Tsivilev; the latter is Belousov’s deputy.
Will this benefit the Russian Army? On one hand, its potential should not be underestimated. At the beginning of March, the BBC noted that “the shortcomings of the Russian Army in the coordination of combat arms components, infantry, armored vehicles, drones, aviation, and much more…have now clearly, if not eliminated, at least partially corrected.” At the same time, it was noted that the Russian Army had not advanced very far and was unable to truly eradicate Ukrainian resistance.
Now, military experts say that Russia was unable to realize the military advantage it had, both at the beginning of the conflict and in recent months. Its offensive potential, while grinding forward in Donbas, has been blunted at a time when Ukraine is restoring its forces through the influx of Western weapons and increased (albeit slow) mobilization. The Kursk incursion has meanwhile worsened the situation for Russia’s generals.
At the same time, it may be assumed that the fight against corruption, at least in its initial stages, will fail to deliver significant benefits but will even slow down certain processes in the Russian Army that were built exclusively on the basis of personal gain, with the beneficiaries of illicit payments losing their selfish motivation.
At the same time, American analyst Michael Kaufman believes there is still a risk that Moscow will take Chasov Yar and Pokrovsk, which would seriously complicate the situation for the Ukrainian Army. Russia’s military faces problems, for sure, but so too does Ukraine’s.
Kseniya Kirillova is an analyst focused on Russian society, mentality, propaganda, and foreign policy. The author of numerous articles for CEPA and the Jamestown Foundation, she has also written for the Atlantic Council, Stratfor, and others.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
War Without End
Russia’s Shadow Warfare
CEPA Forum 2025
Explore CEPA’s flagship event.
