A Russian deputy defense minister has been charged with taking a bribe, in Russia’s highest-profile corruption scandal since President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukrainemore than two years ago.
Timur Ivanov is suspected of accepting a bribe of 1 million rubles (at least $10,800), Russian state media TASS reported.
He appeared in a Moscow court Wednesday, dressed in full military garb as he stood in a glass cage, and was accused of receiving a bribe as part of an organized group while performing contracted work for the Defense Ministry. If convicted, he faces 15 years in prison.
Ivanov will be held in custody in a pre-trial detention center until at least June 23, Moscow’s court wrote on Telegram. His lawyer, Denis Baluyev, said he is appealing the case and requested that Ivanov be put under house arrest instead, according to Russian state media RIA Novosti.
Ivanov, who has been in his post since 2016, is seen as a senior architect of Russia’s war in Ukraine and a close ally of Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu.
The unexpected arrest of an ally of Shoigu may again put pressure on the defense minister, who has been criticized for his handling of the invasion of Ukraine – most forcefully by the Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin in the months before his death last year. Despite setbacks, Shoigu has been kept in his post by Putin.
Russian investigative journalist Andrey Soldatov told CNN this aligns with a “tactic” used by the FSB, Russia’s security service, where it arrests a high-ranking official in order to crack down on rule-breaking in the ministry, agency or organization as a whole.
“Now that deputy will be extensively interrogated, not only about himself, and is supposed to provide incriminating evidence… on big shots of the organization,” Soldatov said.
Ivanov’s responsibilities have included the reconstruction of Mairupol, a city in southern Ukraine reduced to ruin by Russian forces in a months-long siege at the outset of the war. The minister has frequently been seen cutting ribbons on various construction projects in the city – as Russia attempts to put a Potemkin facade on the city it destroyed.
