A former high-ranking Russian general has been sentenced to seven years in a maximum-security prison after being found guilty of taking bribes worth some €390,000.
Lt Gen Vadim Shamarin, the former deputy head of the Russian army’s general staff, was arrested last year during a Kremlin-led crackdown on corruption in Russia’s defense ministry and accused of taking “a particularly large bribe” from a telecommunications firm.
He is one of several top officials caught up in a wave of corruption scandals that have rocked the Russian military over the past year.
Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said Shamarin took bribes worth 36 million roubles (around €390,000) between 2019 and 2023 from a factory in the Ural Mountains, central Russia, that produces communications equipment.
In return, Shamarin increased the size of state contracts awarded to the firm, the committee said.
A Moscow court on Thursday sentenced him to seven years in prison and stripped him of his military rank. The court also banned him from public service for seven years and ordered the confiscation of assets worth over 36 million roubles.
Shamarin’s arrest is viewed as part of a broader anti-graft campaign as Russian President Vladimir Putin looks to clamp down on corruption, inefficiency and waste in Russia’s huge military budget as it wages war in Ukraine.
Last year, the Kremlin also launched criminal cases against former deputy defence ministers Timur Ivanov, Pavel Popov and Dmitry Bulgakov.
All served under Sergei Shoigu, who was removed as defense minister in 2024 and reassigned as secretary of Russia’s Security Council.
In the latest case, Alexei Smirnov, the former governor of Russia’s western Kursk region, was arrested on Wednesday and charged with embezzling money earmarked for building defenses along the border with Ukraine.
Smirnov was head of the region when Ukrainian troops stormed across the border in a large-scale incursion last August. Ukraine seized a chunk of Kursk and held onto it for months, but since then a Russian offensive has ejected most of its forces.