Mystery as Russian General Linked to Shoigu Found Dead

Magomed Khandayev, a Russian Defense Ministry official, has died unexpectedly at the age of 61, state-run agencies reported on Tuesday.

Khandayev had served as head of the state examination department of Russia's Defense Ministry since June 2023. The cause of his death or where he died has not been disclosed.

The head of the Shamilsky District in Russia's Dagestan Republic, Magomed Gasanov, told Tass that Khandayev's body been flown to the city of Makhachkala, and that he would be buried in his native village of Genta.

Russian newspaper Kommersant reported that Khandayev was a direct subordinate to former Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov, who was arrested on corruption charges in April.

A number of high-ranking military officials have been arrested since April, including Yuri Kuznetsov, the head of the Russia's Defense Ministry's personnel department. Meanwhile, Sergei Shoigu was replaced as defense minister after holding the position for 12 years, in a surprise shake-up of the department.

It is the latest in a series of mysterious deaths involving prominent Russian figures since Russian President Vladimir Putin's forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Khandayev held the position of general director of the Department of the Customer of Capital Construction of the Ministry of Defense from 2018 to 2022, and was the general director of the Main Directorate of Special Construction from June 2022.

Russia's Investigative Committee said on April 23 that Ivanov was arrested on suspicion of taking bribes. He had held the post of Russian deputy defense minister since May 2016, and his role involved asset management, overseeing the construction of ministry facilities, providing medical support for Russia's military, and managing troop housing.

X (formerly Twitter) user Dmitri, from War Translated—an independent project that translates materials about the war—said at the time that Ivanov's arrest was likely a "sensitive attack" against Shoigu.

"Without Putin's sanction, such an arrest was impossible. Ivanov is one of Shoigu's 12 deputies," he said.

The independent Russian news outlet Moscow Times reported that it's unclear if Khandayev was able to testify in Ivanov's case.

Sources in the Kremlin government told the publication that the recent push to "clean up" the Defense Ministry was launched by Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) on Putin's orders.

The sources said the FSB aims to shift the blame for failures in the Ukraine war onto the army, and that the security service wants to control the Defense Ministry budgets. A Kremlin source predicted that hundreds of people within the department would be arrested by the end of the year.

There have been a number of unexplained deaths of prominent Russians since the war broke out, including Pavel Antov, 65, a Russian politician who criticized Putin's invasion of Ukraine, and Ravil Maganov, 67, the chairman of Russian oil giant Lukoil.

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