Russian authorities had on Monday announced the arrest of the Kursk region’s acting deputy governor, Vladimir Bazarov, amid allegations that he participated in embezzling funds meant for border fortifications in the neighboring Belgorod region.
Bazarov is the latest official arrested in the Belgorod embezzlement case, which has an estimated total damage of 1 billion rubles ($12.4 million), according to The Moscow Times.
Alexander Khinshtein, acting Kursk region governor, confirmed that Bazarov had been arrested on Telegram.
“Investigative actions are underway related to his previous place of work in the Belgorod region… preliminarily, the case concerns the construction of defensive structures,” Khinshtein wrote.
The Times previously reported that as much as a fifth of the 20 billion rubles ($248 million) allocated by the Kremlin to building defenses along the border to deter Ukrainian attacks had been embezzled.
Searches are reportedly being conducted at Bazarov’s home and his office in Kursk, and his electronic devices have been confiscated.
The Kremlin allocated huge sums to fortify the regions of Belgorod and Kursk amid concerns that Ukraine would launch an offensive on Russian soil after the full-scale invasion.
Its efforts failed as Ukraine launched a successful offensive in Kursk in August 2024, marking the first time enemy tanks had penetrated Russian territory since the Second World War.
The incursion was deeply humiliating to the Kremlin, triggering a political as well as military crisis, which led the Kremlin to pursue even greater crackdowns on free expression amid brewing discontent.
Ukraine has also carried out raids a short distance within Russian territory in the Belgorod region.
The arrest of Bazarov is the latest development in an unfolding scandal related to embezzlement by Russian officials in both the Kursk and Belgorod regions, which has proved a thorn in the Kremlin’s side.
In July, Russia’s former transportation minister, Roman Starovoit, reportedly killed himself hours after he was dismissed amid rumors that he was being investigated for taking part in embezzling huge sums from the Kursk Region Development Corporation that was earmarked for construction fortifications along Ukraine’s border.
Kommersant, Russia’s leading business newspaper, reported that Kursk officials who had acted as co-conspirators in the embezzlement case testified against Starovoit to implicate him.
In April, former Kursk region governor Alexei Smirnov and his first deputy, Alexei Dedov, were arrested and charged with large-scale fraud, also for embezzling money from the Kursk Region Development Corporation.
In December, Vladimir Lukin, general director of the Kursk Region Development Corporation, was similarly arrested on charges of misusing funds allocated for the fortifications, which had involved officials authorizing double payments to contractors for work already completed and paid for.
Russia’s military ranks have not been spared from large-scale fraud and corruption scandals either.
Last week, The Times reported that 200 million rubles ($2.5 million) had been claimed from the state budget in fraudulent compensation for war injuries, after dozens of elite Russian servicemen deliberately shot themselves and each other for the payout.
One of the alleged ringleaders was Lieutenant Colonel Konstantin Frolov, who had been hailed as a war hero in Russian media.
The other was Colonel Artyom Gorodilov, who was sanctioned for “his involvement in gross violations of human rights” by the US for leading a massacre of civilians in Ukraine’s Bucha.
Both men will stand trial on charges of large-scale fraud, with their requests to be sent back to the front denied.