The Russian corruption purges have reached new heights.

Several more big figures have been arrested this week. On July 26, it was ex-Deputy Defense Minister Dmitry Bulgakov, who headed the Russian Logistics and Transport wing of the Armed Forces.

He was arrested on corruption charges of large-scale embezzlement stemming from his handling of food supplies to the military. It’s alleged to be a typical scheme, where favorable contracts were given to his own “in house” vendors in exchange for favors and kickbacks. The food delivered to the servicemen was considered subpar. In particular, it’s said he supplied food to Russian servicemen in the Syria campaign which was so bad, many troops used their own money to buy local food instead. This, by the way, is the same complaint once lodged against Prigozhin.

The detained ex-deputy head of the Russian Ministry of Defense Bulgakov lobbied for the interests of the Gryazinsky Food Plant JSC, using his official position – RIA Novosti source

A system was created to supply the troops with low-quality food at an inflated cost, even in the conditions of the SMO.

But what was most disturbing was that in Bulgakov’s home, a series of quite grandiosely self-aggrandizing portraits were recovered by the FSB:

In each case, who is centered but Shoigu and what some are deeming his “gang of underlings”.

They can be identified as follows:

1. Ex-Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who himself was removed upon the start of Putin’s new term.

2. First Deputy Defense Minister Ruslan Tsalikov, who resigned a few months ago.

3. Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov, famously arrested and imprisoned last month, also for large-scale embezzling.

4. Deputy Defense Minister Colonel General Yuri Sadovenko, who was dismissed from office for an unspecified reason in May, around the same time Tsalikov resigned.

5. Deputy Defense Minister Tatyana Shevtsova, who was also removed recently and was suspected of various things, though nothing concrete has turned up, with claims she was Shoigu’s personal assistant.

6. Deputy Defense Minister General Nikolai Pankov, dismissed from office in June.

7. Deputy Defense Minister Army General Pavel Popov, likewise dismissed with the rest of the June group.

8. Bulgakov himself, who owned the paintings above.

The others in the photo who have not suffered any purges thus far are Alexander Fomin, between 3 and 6 above, Roscosmos head Yuri Borisov, next to 8, and Gerasimov next to him.

You can see many of the same faces reprise their roles in the other paintings.

Now, as of July 31, news broke that Director of the Department of Military Property of the Ministry of Defense Mikhail Sapunov has been removed from his post:

RBC writes that the director of the Department of Military Property of the Ministry of Defense, Mikhail Sapunov, who held this post since 2017, has resigned from the Russian Defense Ministry. This is not the only little-known dismissal of a high-ranking official in the Ministry of Defense. Mostly those who dealt with the most monetary issues are dismissed. Apparently, Belousov’s “verification machine” is working. Officials of the Ministry of Defense from the old team quickly lose their posts, they cannot resist.

If things weren’t “intriguing” enough, a businessman named Igor Kotelnikov, who was scooped up in the dragnet earlier, and who had ties to the Bulgakov case, died in pre-trial detention from an alleged “blood clot”:

Then, Vladimir Pavlov, head of Voentorg JSC—which is the main contractor for various logistical supplies to the Russian Armed Forces—was also just arrested:

Yesterday, the head of Voentorg JSC, Vladimir Vladimirovich Pavlov, was detained. In 2019, he signed a contract for the supply of “Army dressing cases” to the chain of stores and the army-in the amount of 625 million rubles, with a rollback of 400 million rubles in this amount. In general, judging by the value of the property of Pavlov and his family, he stole about 1 mlr. rubles. The investigation will sort it out.

The head of Voentorg JSC and the beneficiary of controlled organizations were detained. A criminal case has been opened regarding the theft of funds on an especially large scale during the execution of government contracts for the needs of the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Internal Affairs reports.

According to investigators, in 2019, the director and employees of Voentorg JSC with accomplices in Moscow, North Ossetia-Alania, Stavropol Territory, and Pskov Region entered into a criminal conspiracy and entered into government contracts for the supply of “army toiletries” for 625 million rubles. At the same time, the price of the contracts was inflated by over 400 million rubles.

During 64 searches, documents, electronic storage media, mobile communications equipment and other items of evidentiary value were seized. More than 30 witnesses were questioned.

Keep in mind, previously Lt General Kuznetsov and Major General Ivan Popov were likewise booked for corruption and fraud.

Last month, another general named Magomed Khandayev also died, which Western press immediately tied to the ongoing purges and intrigues:

As can be seen above, he was reportedly a direct subordinate to now disgraced Timur Ivanov, although his linking by Western press to the ongoing investigations is uncorroborated and remains one of the few conjectural or exaggerated ties to this story. However, given that he did work in the Main Directorate of Special Construction for the military, which is one of the areas likely linked to the various embezzlement schemes, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that he was in fact caught up in the ongoing firestorm.

In almost every case, the above detained former deputies were involved in the logistics and supply to the Russian army, with Bulgakov being head of the department, and Tatiana Shevtsvova the accountant for the group.

Though the scale of the purges is off the charts, they are obviously being taken with great satisfaction by most Russian military observers, as a good sign of progress—one analyst noting:

And this suggests that there are no longer barriers and untouchables for the DVKR, it won’t be possible to hide behind the Hero’s Star, the Order of Merit for the Fatherland of four degrees, and even if you have 5 packages of them, it still won’t save you if you’re stealing from the people and at any moment they can knock on the door of their soldiers – soldiers of the invisible front from counterintelligence.

But many are rightfully angry, given the vast problems in supplies—from body armor, to food and drink, ammo, etc.—that existed from the start. Famed correspondent Alexander Kharchenko vents:

The former Deputy Minister of Defense Dmitry Bulgakov was detained. He is in the corruption case. Bulgakov was responsible for the logistics of the army and left his post in 2022.

I remember how in 2022 a loud trough of “analysts” was formed, which claimed that everything in the army was good. There are no problems with supply, the soldiers have enough.

How are you feeling, gentlemen “experts”? Is everything all right with you?

Alexander Kharchenko

But the biggest bombshell of all was a report in July wherein Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Mikhail Delyagin announced that 11 trillion Rubles had been stolen in the Russian MOD under Sergei Shoigu’s tenure:

But hold your horses—it’s not exactly as it seems. Two main points: Firstly, he is not outright stating that Shoigu stole ₽11 trillion Rubles worth of funds himself—which is a massive $100 billion USD, equivalent to one full year’s worth of the Russian defense budget—but rather that it happened during his tenure. As you can see, it’s one stop away from direct accusation, for which there is obviously no evidence at this time. Naturally, this is precisely the interpretation pro-Western propagandists seized upon.

Secondly: this was not some kind of official Duma investigation, but rather one deputy making a statement based on the findings of a seemingly unofficial “mathematician”. Furthermore, Delyagin is a known muckraker of sorts, who has even previously used the 6th columnist VChk-OGPU channel as source in his online rabble-rouses. This channel’s infamous founder, Alexander Gusov, had been arrested by FSB last year for blackmailing and extorting citizens in order to get “dirt” for his channel’s TMZ-style hit pieces on various Russian political figures. VChk-OGPU is a favorite source amongst all 5th and 6th columnist and pro-UA channels—although that’s not to say it’s entirely fake, as it does occasionally dig up accurate info.

But the point is to convey that Delyagin is a bit of an agitator in this regard, though that’s not to say his information is necessarily wrong, but rather that it’s not quite as official as it seems, and to my knowledge, has not been corroborated anywhere.

Here’s what he himself wrote on his TG channel previously, to give an idea of his sentiments and leanings:

Serdyukov, whom I hate, managed to undermine the bureaucratic cohesion at the top of the army. Under him, the development of many types of weapons began, some of which we see in action today. And under him, in fact, the prestige of serving in the army was revived.

Under Shoigu, a middle-level bureaucratic caste has emerged. To make this swamp work, they froze in a viscous quagmire. Belousov will be faced with the task of making sure that initiatives (which are extremely necessary today) do not have to be promoted with extreme effort.

Belousov’s strength is that he keenly understands the importance of technological developments. As a person brought up by the Soviet school of economic forecasting, he understands that the key to success is the development of technology. This seemingly simple idea is somehow inaccessible to many economists. But it is obvious to all serious politicians.

So, he states the widely hated Serdyukov of the infamous Serdyukov Reforms actually managed to successfully disrupt the bureaucracy at the top of the armed forces. But Shoigu, according to him, fostered a decadent bureaucratic “swamp”, which Belousov is now faced with dismantling.

But if you want to get a measure of the man yourself, here’s an interview from about two months ago where he speaks on many of these topics:

In general, he strikes me as genuine in his quest to uncover the Defense Ministry’s deeply-buried rot.

Many pro-UA commentators now believe that “the walls are closing in on Shoigu”, and slowly but surely, the corruption dragnet is leading to him at the top of the pyramid. It’s difficult to say what if any involvement he had in the various kickback schemes his subordinates so freely employed to enrich themselves. But one thing’s for certain, is that on a purely theoretical basis, if you were in Putin’s shoes and constructing a massive takedown operation of the MOD, you would naturally save the top guy for last.

The reason is, if you take him down first, there is chance for a coup or some military action being taken against you, given that all his ‘lieutenants’—to use mafia jargon—would assume they’re next, and immediately begin plotting a counterattack on his behalf. But if you gradually take the foundation out from under the chief first, you weaken his power base, and essentially deprive him of any ability to counteract your move for when the time actually comes to take him down.

That being said, Shoigu himself may merely have been running a loose ship and turning a blind eye to, or may have been outright oblivious of, the shark-like feeding frenzy of corruption happening beneath him—which still does not altogether redound well on him, of course, even if it turns out he’s innocent of any direct participation in the schemes himself.

In general, it’s an unprecedented turn of events, with such a large claque of logistics-related deputy ministers and generals being rounded up. Though it is extremely revealing of Russia’s past failings and shortcomings, it also bodes well for the future, given that Belousov seems to truly embody the great scythe-wielding revenant of justice and reform many expected him to be.

And by the way, before anyone thinks Russia is unique, the U.S. Department of Defense has no less corruption, and likely much more. It’s just that in the U.S., such corruption is institutionalized and instrumentalized in a more glossily sophisticated and quasi-legal way. What do you think those $52,000 trash cans from Boeing were all about?

Someone was certainly getting kickbacks for that.

Or how about the trillions the Pentagon regularly “loses” or fails to account for in various ways?

Someone should be getting arrested for that, but the fact that they don’t somehow gives the U.S. a more virtuous gleam, whereas the country actually uprooting its corruption looks all the worse for it.

Additionally, for those who may ask: could this mean Prigozhin was right about everything? I say the following, which I have articulated before:

Prigozhin was a very multifaceted, dynamic, and complex figure, learned in the arts of subterfuge and deception, who knew how to exploit genuine issues for his own personal gain. Thus, the fact that he played to our sympathies by seizing upon real issues, then vastly embellishing and taking advantage of them to grow his own brand, does not mean he himself was not guilty of all the same accusations. We already know, as mentioned, he used the same cheap food scam to bilk the Russian taxpayers out of billions via state contracts with his Concord Catering company.

However, he was sued over 560 times in 2022, allegedly for violations including “undersized quantities of food, expired products, substitutions of substituted products with substitutes of other quality, E. coli detected in food, cooks without health certificates, violations in storage, and so on,” according to Russian media. The Russian MoD’s procurement entity, JSC Voentorg, filed the suit claiming 107 million rubles, around $1.3 million USD, in damages.

When there’s a war of gangster against gangster, it doesn’t mean the charismatic and ‘likeable’ gangster who demonstrates genuine patriotic fervor is automatically in the right. That being said, as stupid as it may sound, Prigozhin may very well have given his life—to some extent, at least, and whether knowingly or inadvertently—for the greater cause of disrupting the calcified remnants of post-Soviet corruption in the Russian MOD’s ranks. In one of his final on-screen appearances, captured by veteran correspondent Patrick Lancaster as Prigozhin’s dark SUV sped away from a frenzied Rostov crowd not long after seizing the town by force, Prigozhin intimated that the point was to “reinvigorate” or “energize” the ‘system’, and he felt he succeeded; he confirmed this in later online posts, as well:

SEE VIDEO HERE

It’s not inconceivable that his little historic dust-up with the MOD scared enough high level players—most notably Putin himself—into taking necessary action toward reforming the whole system from the ground up. And thus, in some ways, he fulfilled both his incompatible roles as grifter and savior in one, with us left to forever wonder whether it was as planned, or just another opportunistic exploit from the great chameleon and master of theatrics himself.

In semi-related news, Britain fell off the list of the world’s top 10 manufacturing powers:

CONTINUE READING HERE

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Published to The Liberty Beacon from EuropeReloaded.com