It is a purge at accelerated speed, “the most serious attack against the Russian army in nearly twenty-five years of Putin’s rule”, according to Russian investigative journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan. “One by one, military officials are being thrown into prison. While the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine appears more favorable to the Kremlin, Putin seems to think that now is an appropriate time to punish the military for the failures of 2022,” write the founders of the independent information site Agentura.ru.
In one month, at least four senior military officials have fallen, in addition to the dismissal of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu: Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov; Lieutenant General Yuri Kuznetsov, head of the ministry’s personnel department; General Ivan Popov and Deputy Chief of the General Staff Vadim Shamarin. All four are accused of fraud or corruption. A great classic of Russian despotism, according to Françoise Thom, specialist in the USSR and post-Soviet Russia.
The Express : How do you interpret the ongoing purges within the Russian armies?
Françoise Thom : Vladimir Putin is a KGB man. However, there is a historical antagonism between the KGB (the “Chekists”) and the military, which dates back to Soviet times. Within the KGB, as today within the FSB, an entire administration was responsible for monitoring the military. She compiled compromising files on all army officers, collecting denunciations accumulating over the years. Stalin made extensive use of this practice. He began to gather compromising material on Georgy Zhukov and his marshals in the middle of the war.
First, he authorized the military to pillage the so-called “liberated” territories, Germany among others. The officers helped themselves without scruple. Declassified Soviet archives reveal in particular that Zhukov looted a lot in Germany, filling entire wagons with tapestries, paintings, pianos, crockery, etc. The Soviet high-ranking officers had the means to charter trains to take this loot home! Stalin turned a blind eye to this, but at the same time he ordered the MGB [NDLR : la police secrète entre 1946 et 1954] to collect all possible elements on the activities of its generals abroad. At the end of the war, Stalin, who had taken umbrage at Zhukov’s prestige [NDLR : des rumeurs donnaient ce dernier en successeur du “Tyran rouge”], brought out the file compiled on him to accuse him of corruption and exile him. Other less prestigious soldiers were not so lucky; Marshal Koulik, for example, was shot after the war.
Putin perpetuates Stalin’s tradition: he only surrounds himself with people over whom he has “kompromat” so that he can hold them and get rid of them in due time. Files on the officers currently arrested are believed to date back several years. These accusations of corruption are probably true, but Putin chooses his moment to use them. He did this with all the Russian elites, with all those employed in the state apparatus: ministers, journalists, party leaders. He has “kompromat” [NDLR : des informations compromettantes recueillies contre des personnes susceptibles d’être soumises à un chantage] on everyone around him. It is a way of ensuring control.
Why is Putin choosing this moment to get rid of several high-ranking officers?
Several reasons can explain this timing. First, the rise in power of the army, which is currently progressing in Ukraine and has an increasingly significant weight in Russian society. Since the 2022 mobilization was a relative failure and a political disaster for Putin, we are witnessing a real military revolution because power has shifted towards a professionalization of the army, which now pays its soldiers very well. The army recruits from the most modest circles, the Russian “fourth world”. Overnight, these people are paid the equivalent of 3,000 to 4,000 dollars, whereas traditionally the soldier was considered in the Russian and Soviet armies as cannon fodder. It is a revolution, which will ultimately have political repercussions.
These veterans could, in the long term, be a threat to the stability of Putin’s regime. Among the officers, charismatic figures can emerge. General Popov was popular among his troops, which is dangerous for the regime and explains his arrest. The same was true for Prigozhin, who did not find many obstacles to stop him in his path during his march towards Moscow in June 2023. This is a bit like what happened in Rome from the military reform of Marius who decides to enlist the plebs, for lack of soldiers who can be mobilized: the legions attach themselves to their leader, who can seize power as Caesar did marching on Rome with his legions [NDLR : Prigojine a finalement fait demi-tour pour se réfugier au Bélarus, et est mort deux mois plus tard dans le crash de son avion].
After Prigozhin’s abortive rebellion, there were virtually no purges. Putin waited a few months, and is now starting to implement Prigozhin’s program, which called for dismissing corrupt top brass. These arrests are very popular among the “Z patriots”, military bloggers who called for purges against the corrupt.
Finally, this “clean-up” can be explained by the high-speed militarization of the country: from now on, most of the financial flows are directed towards the military machine. Everywhere, the loot is shrinking, except in the military sector, which consequently arouses much desire among rival clans, leading to a torrent of denunciations.
Is Putin afraid of his generals?
The Prigozhin precedent was a wake-up call for Putin. He is aware of the destabilization implied by the upheaval brought to Russian society by the new military organization. The war serves as a “social elevator” for some, but the number of losers is considerable, particularly among the oligarchs forced to put their hands in their pockets to finance the military budget. An “anti-corruption” campaign is always an indicator of tensions within the ruling elites. It is obviously not a question of eradicating corruption, on which the regime is based, but of using the pretext of hunting down the corrupt for demagogic purposes. Putin wants to intimidate those who might be tempted to rebel. Hence the spectacular arrests of generals. All this flatters the common people and reinforces the image of the tsar redresser of wrongs that Putin likes.
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