The head of the Russian Armed Forces Main Communications Directorate and Deputy Chief of the General Staff, Lt. Gen. Vadim Shamarin, appeared in the 235th garrison military court, charged with accepting a bribe on an especially large scale and was sentenced to be detained for two months in pretrial detention according to the Kommersant news site.

Shamarin has spent the whole of his nearly 30-year career within the communications organizations of Russia’s armed forces. He rose from the rank of lieutenant, in command of a remote radio station in the Far Eastern Military District in 1992, to become the head of the communications directorate and a deputy to Valery Gerasimov in 2021.

He was appointed to the latter post following the arrest of the former Deputy Chief of the General Staff, Khalil Arslanov, on fraud and corruption charges relating to accepting bribes and large-scale fraud involving the supply of technological equipment to the armed forces. He was found guilty of two counts of large-scale fraud totaling about 6.7 billion rubles ($750 million).

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If found guilty, he would be for imprisonment for a term of 8 to 15 years.

Kommersant, citing its sources within Russian law enforcement agencies reported that Shamarin’s home and office were searched, after which he was taken into custody for interrogation at the Main Military Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation.

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Over the past month, several high-ranking Russian military officials accused of accepting bribes, fraud or other corrupt activity have been arrested in Russia. This has included Russian Deputy Defense Minister, Timur Ivanov, head of the military personnel department, Yuri Kuznetsov, and former commander of the 58th Army of the Southern Military District, Ivan Popov.

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