By Isabel van Brugen, Newsweek, 8/1/24

Russian President Vladimir Putin ramped up his war machine purge with new arrests this week.

Vladimir Pavlov, the head of the Russian Defense Ministry’s procurement arm, JSC Voentorg, was detained and accused of fraud, the country’s Ministry of Internal Affairs said, state-run news agency Tass reported on Thursday.

JSC Voentorg is a contractor of the Russian Defense Ministry and provides catering and laundry services for the Russian army.

According to Russian investigative site The Insider, Pavlov is a longstanding business partner of the former mistress of ex-Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who was removed from his post in May after holding the position for 12 years, in a surprise shake-up of the department.

Pavlov stands accused of the “theft of funds on an especially large scale from the budget of the Russian Federation during the execution of government contracts for the needs of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation,” Irina Volk, a representative for the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs told reporters on Thursday.

The official is accused of working with accomplices to purchase army toiletry bags at inflated prices between December 2019 and December 2022, and profiting from the scheme.

Newsweek has contacted Russia’s Defense Ministry for comment by email.

Separately on Thursday, Sergei Sukhov, a prominent manager of a military construction company, was arrested in an embezzlement case, RBC reported.

Previously, Andrei Belkov, the director of the Defense Ministry’s Military Construction Company, had been accused of abuse of power in the execution of a state defense order.

He was detained for purchasing a tomograph at an inflated price while he was the head of another military organization under the defense ministry—the Main Military Construction Directorate for Special Facilities, Russian newspaper Kommersant reported, citing security agency sources.

Belkov’s work was supervised by former Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov, who was arrested on April 23 on suspicion of taking bribes. Since Ivanov’s arrest, numerous top officials at the ministry and general staff have been detained by authorities.

A thorough investigation is being conducted into contracts concluded during Belkov’s leadership of the Defense Ministry’s Military Construction Company, as well as into his personal earnings and his nonofficial connections, Kommersant reported.

“There is a fierce cleanup underway,” a source close to the Kremlin and Defense Ministry told the independent [western funded] Russian news outlet Moscow Times in May. “There is still a long way to go before the purges are finished. More arrests await us.”