Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces arrested

The head of the Main Communications Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces, Lieutenant General Vadim Shamarin, was arrested. Shamarin also serves as Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces.

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Law enforcement officers detained the lieutenant general earlier on Thursday, May 23. The chief signalman of the Russian army was taken for questioning to the Main Military Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee of Russia. His home was also searched.

Vadim Shamarin was arrested for two months as a defendant. According to the Kommersant newspaper, Shamarin is involved in a fraud case. It was also said that he was suspected of receiving a bribe on an especially large scale. He faces up to 15 years in prison under Part 6 of Article 290 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.

• Vadim Shamarin was born in 1971 in Taganrog. He studied at the Military Academy of Communications and also graduated from the Novocherkassk Higher Military Command School of Communications. Since 1992 he served as commander of a remote control platoon at a radio centre.
• In 2020, he was appointed acting head of the Main Communications Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces — Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces. In 2021, he became the head of the department and took office as Deputy Chief of the General Staff.

Several other high-ranking officials of the Defence Ministry have been detained in the past months.

Earlier in May, former commander of the 58th Guards Combined Arms Army of the Russian Armed Forces, Ivan Popov was arrested for fraud.

In April, Deputy Minister of Defence Timur Ivanov was arrested. On May 13, Lieutenant General Yuri Kuznetsov, chair of the Main Personnel Directorate of the Ministry of Defence was arrested as well. Kuznetsov is was charged with receiving a bribe on an especially large scale.

All of the above-mentioned arrests took place against the backdrop of President Putin's decision to replace Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu with former Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov.

Yuri Sadovenko, Deputy Head of the Ministry of Defence, was also dismissed after 11 years of service. He was replaced with Accounts Chamber auditor, Oleg Savelyev.