Russian President Vladimir Putin fired 15 military generals on Tuesday ahead of the country’s biggest military maneuvers since the height of the Cold War next month.
It is not uncommon for Russia to axe generals in groups and in this instance those who were dismissed included Vladlen Aksenov, the deputy minister of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations, and Sergei Koryuchin, head of federal penitentiary services in Russia’s Omsk region, Newsweek reported.
“The reasons why generals are fired vary, and in years past they've mixed the reasons why any particular guy is let go: lost a bureaucratic struggle; the leadership doesn't want a guy to become too ensconced in a position and turn it into a fiefdom; actual policy differences; or unapproved corruption,” explained Yuval Weber, a Russia expert at the Daniel Morgan Graduate School and DMGS-Kennan Institute Fellow at the Wilson Center, in Washington, D.C.
Earlier this year it emerged that Putin had fired 11 generals shortly after he was reelected for the fourth time as Russia’s president, BBC reported.
Among those sacked were generals from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Federal Penitentiary Service and the Ministry for Emergency Situations.
Last year it was reported that Putin dismissed eight generals from their posts in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Emergency Situations and the Federal Service for the Execution of Sentences, according to Front News International.
In previous dismissals, officials were apprehended for corruption, which proved to be the case this week for at least one general, Newsweek noted.
Mikhail Begun, the minister of emergency situations in Russia’s Tomsk region, was reportedly arrested for accepting bribes and experts project that other apprehensions may follow.
“No one at the top is clean but sometimes an official can go too far,” Weber said. “When someone loses a bureaucratic struggle, evidence of corruption can also be found, so it's hard to tell the story or its causality without digging in deeper.”
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