Former Russian defense official detained suspected of fraud in latest high-profile military arrest

A former Russian defense official was ordered detained on fraud charges Thursday in the latest high-profile arrest of a senior military official in what appears a sweeping investigation into abuse of office in the top echelons of the military leadership.

Former Deputy Defense Minister Pavel Popov faces up to 10 years in prison if he is charged and convicted after being detained on suspicion of committing fraud, Russian state news agencies reported Thursday.

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 patriotism in Russia’s 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. Russian President Vladimir Putin personally donated money to commission the main icon for the church, according to the Kremlin.

Popov is now 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 long-time defense minister Sergei Shoigu with an economist, Andrei Belousov. Analysts suggest the arrests are a sign that the most egregious corruption in the defense ministry will no longer be tolerated.

Former deputy defense minister 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, Tass said. 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 from Russia's Investigative Committee told state news agency 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 roubles ($5.5 million) and investigators are establishing whether they were acquired legally, Petrenko told Tass.

Popov was a deputy defense minister from 2013 to June this year when he was dismissed by a 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 the creation of a system to supply low-quality food rations to Russian troops at inflated prices. If found guilty, he faces up to 10 years in prison.

Bulgakov was deputy defense minister from 2008 to September 2022, when he was dismissed. He was in charge of logistics at the time, and while the ministry had said that he was taking another job, the move was seen as punishment for flaws in supporting operations in Ukraine.