MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin fired four deputy defense ministers on Monday and appointed a family member to fill one of the resulting vacancies.
The reshuffle marked the latest stage in a radical shakeout that Putin launched in May when he unexpectedly ousted his longtime Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
More than two years after the war in Ukraine, Putin has used the changes to signal that he wants to end waste and corruption within the ministry and use Russia’s war economy more effectively to meet the needs of soldiers on the front .
In the latest changes, Putin fired Deputy Defense Ministers Nikolai Pankov, Ruslan Tsalikov, Tatiana Shevtsova and Pavel Popov, according to Kremlin decrees.
He appointed Anna Tsivileva, the daughter of his late cousin, as deputy defense minister, whose responsibilities will include improving social and housing support for military personnel. Her husband Sergei Tsivilev is Russia’s Energy Minister.
Putin had previously appointed Tsivileva to head a state fund to support participants in Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.
Leonid Gornin, previously first deputy finance minister, will now serve as first deputy defense minister under Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, an economist with no military experience who was appointed last month to replace Shoigu.
Gornin’s main tasks are “increasing the transparency of financial flows and ensuring efficient expenditure of budgetary resources,” the Defense Ministry said.
Also named as deputy defense ministers were Oleg Savelyev and Pavel Fradkov, the son of the former prime minister Mikhail Fradkov. Fradkov will oversee the management of properties, land and structures related to the military.
Another former deputy defense minister, Timur Ivanov, was arrested on April 23 and charged with taking bribes. Since then, four other top ministry and general staff officials have been arrested on the same charges in the biggest corruption scandal to hit the Russian government in years.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Alexander Smith)
