Putin Sends Beleaguered Shoigu to Iran amid Widening Defense Purge

Sergei Shoigu, who was one of the faces of Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, was dispatched to Iran to meet with Tehran's top security officials on a day when other top Russian defense officials were arrested.

The Russian president removed Shoigu from his defense minister post in May, replacing him with Andrei Belousov. Shoigu is now secretary of Russia's Security Council but recent arrests of high-ranking officials who served with him have raised speculation about his declining influence within the Kremlin.

Shoigu met with top Iranian officials on Monday, including new president Masoud Pezeshkian, Armed Forces General Staff Chief Major General Mohammad Bagheri, and Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Akbar Ahmadian.

Tehran said it would expand ties with Moscow in talks which come as Iran weighs its response to the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, a political leader from the Iranian-backed Hamas group which has accused Israel of being behind the killing.

However, back in Russia there were further arrests of Shoigu's former top colleagues making the news.

Vyacheslav Akhmedov and Major General Vladimir Shesterov were detained on Monday suspected of fraud related to the embezzlement of government funds for Patriot Park, considered to be Russia's "military Disneyland," said to be Shoigu's personal project.

In April, Russia's deputy defense minister Timur Ivanov had been arrested on accusations of treason and accused of bribe-taking. Meanwhile, last week, Russian state media reported that Vladimir Pavlov, the head of the defense ministry's procurement arm, JSC Voentorg, had been arrested and accused of fraud.

The Russian military blogger Two Majors said on Telegram the latest arrests were part of a clampdown on the previous team that controlled the defense ministry under Shoigu's leadership and showed his diminishing influence. "The weeding out of corrupt officials continues, which is good news," Monday's post by Two Majors said.

The Telegram channel VCHK-OGPU, which claims to have links to Russia's security services, posted on August 1 that long-time Shoigu ally, Pavel Baryshev, was dismissed from his post as deputy minister of natural resources.

"Shoigu continues to lose his people in the power structures," the post said, "Baryshev's dismissal is an indicator of the loss of influence of the Shoigu clan."

In noting the responses by Russian military bloggers, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said Monday that the arrests of those affiliated with Shoigu could signal his "declining influence within the Kremlin, as well as the Kremlin's desire to 'clean house,"' to make way for the ministry's new leadership.

Newsweek has contacted the Russian MOD for comment.

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