Another top Russian officer jailed for bribery

The housecleaning at the Russian defense ministry continues, with the arrest of a deputy chief of staff on bribery charges. Vadim Shamarin, detained on Thursday, is the fourth high-ranking Russian officer to be jailed for graft over the past month. Just two weeks ago, President Vladimir Putin replaced long-serving Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu with long-serving economist Andrei Belousov.

What’s going on? Corruption crackdowns in Russia, where graft is rife, are often more about turf battles than transparency, but in this case, it may be a bit of both.

As we wrote a few weeks ago, Putin is looking to put his war in Ukraine – which he sees as part of a larger, generational conflict with the West – on a more sustainable economic footing.

Doing so requires that the deeply corrupt military establishment steal less, plan better, and fight more efficiently. Arresting top officers for corruption breaks up existing corruption networks and offers a chance for Belousov to, in principle, make things more transparent.

But the cynic in us – otherwise known as “the seasoned observer of Russian politics” – notes that it will also offer Belousov, or those around him, a chance to put their own graft hustles in place.

Let’s see which of those two trends prevails.