A former Defense Ministry official was ordered held in a fraud case Thursday, the latest high-profile arrest in what appears to be a sweeping investigation into abuse of office in Russia's military leadership.
Former Deputy Defense Minister Pavel Popov faces up to 10 years in prison if he is charged and convicted following his detention on suspicion of committing fraud, Russian state news agencies reported, adding that he was ordered held until at least Oct. 29.
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The case against Popov relates to business activities at a sprawling park in Moscow sometimes called Russia's “military Disneyland.”
Patriot Park, a pet project of former Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, is designed to inspire national pride in younger generations and showcases Soviet and Russian weaponry. It has a firing range, air base, museums and conference center and a massive, khaki-colored Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces, which features mosaics of Soviet and Russian soldiers. President Vladimir Putin personally donated money to commission the main icon for the church, according to the Kremlin.
Popov is the eighth top military figure to be arrested on charges of fraud, bribery or abuse of office in recent months, including Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov, who was arrested for bribery in April and later dismissed from his position. The arrests began shortly before Putin replaced Shoigu with an economist, Andrei Belousov.
Analysts suggest the arrests are a sign that Shoigu's associates are being removed from power and that the most egregious corruption in the Defense Ministry will no longer be tolerated.
Popov was responsible for developing and maintaining Patriot Park and is accused of renovating his own properties in the Moscow region at the park's expense, according to the state news agency Tass. He is accused of fraud alongside the director of the park and Maj. Gen Vladimir Shesterov, deputy of the Defense Ministry’s innovations department, both of whom have already been detained.
Popov forced companies that had contracts with Patriot Park to do work on his “out-of-town apartments without paying for them,” Svetlana Petrenko of Russia's Investigative Committee told Tass.
In addition to a plot of land with houses outside Moscow, Popov and his family own “numerous properties in prestigious areas of Moscow, the Moscow region and the Krasnodar region,” in southern Russia, Petrenko said. The properties are worth a total of 500 million rubles ($5.5 million), and investigators are establishing whether they were acquired legally, Petrenko told Tass.
Graft in the Defense Ministry “is so rife” that the choice of who is arrested will be informed by "internal turf wars,” said Richard Connolly, a specialist on the Russian economy and military at the Royal United Services Institute in London.
The arrests are “sending a message in a strategically important sector. But also offering the chance to settle some scores,” he said.
Popov was a deputy defense minister from 2013 until June, when he was dismissed by presidential decree. His arrest comes shortly after that of former Deputy Defense Minister Gen. Dmitry Bulgakov, who was detained in Moscow in July.
According to Tass, Bulgakov is charged with large-scale embezzlement. He reportedly oversaw supplies of food rations to soldiers that reportedly were overpriced and of low quality. If found guilty, he faces up to 10 years in prison.
Bulgakov was deputy defense minister from 2008 until his dismissal in 2022. He was in charge of logistics at the time, and while the ministry had said he was taking another job, the move was seen as punishment for flaws in supporting operations in Ukraine.