Another top Russian establishment figure has fallen: former deputy defence minister Dmitry Bulgakov has been arrested, the FSB has reported. He is the fifth senior defence official, and the second deputy to Shoigu, to be arrested in the military purge. The general is allegedly involved in a corruption case and has been detained in a remand centre. The investigation is ongoing. Bulgakov was in charge of logistics. He was dismissed from his post in September 2022 due to a transfer to another job.
A source close to the Defence Ministry told RBC that the arrested former deputy head of the Russian Defence Ministry, General Bulgakov, did not work in the Defence Ministry’s group of inspectors general, which includes army generals or former deputy defence ministers. “The general was dismissed from the Russian Armed Forces in 2022,” he noted.
Bulgakov’s resignation took place on 24 September, three days after the beginning of partial mobilisation and a large flow of complaints from the mobilised troops regarding equipment supply and poor living conditions. The troops experienced a severe shortage of reconnaissance equipment, personal protective equipment and other equipment needed to carry out combat missions. The company and troop personnel in the Northern Military District area therefore considered the resignation an insufficient measure. The same complaints had come from Syria, the military bought food with their own money.
‘The investigating authorities suspect that Bulgakov committed an offence under part 4 of Article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (embezzlement on a particularly large scale). If found guilty, Bulgakov faces up to 10 years in prison.
According to ‘Baza’, Bulgakov declared two flats in Moscow with a total area of 182 square metres and several plots of land in the districts of Chekhovsky (15 acres) and Naro-Fominsk (12 acres). A plot of land (25 acres) with a house (621.8 square metres) in the village of Buzlanovo, Krasnogorsk district, Moscow region, is registered in the name of the general’s wife.
Another report claims that Bulgakov has a secret dacha in New Riga, a daughter who is an army supplier and an income of one million roubles a month. This is how the former deputy Shoigu, who was arrested for providing soldiers with bad and expensive food, presents himself.
The general’s family was busy ‘feeding’ the army. Two weeks after his resignation as deputy minister, Metla published an investigation which revealed that products for the Defence Ministry (juices, pasta, tea, biscuits, dried fruit) were supplied by the company of his daughter Marina Meshkova. His second daughter’s business partner did the same.
A former deputy defence minister, Bulgakov is a hero of Russia and has been awarded three orders “For Services to the Fatherland”. Born in 1954 in the Kursk region, he graduated from the Higher Military School of Logistics in Volsk and the Military Academy of Logistics and Transport, and in 1996 from the Military Staff Academy.
Since 1997 – Chief of the General Staff for Logistics – First Deputy Chief of Armed Forces Logistics. From 2008 to 2010 – Chief of Armed Forces Logistics – Deputy Minister of Defence.
In 2010, he was appointed Deputy Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation. According to open sources, the title of Hero of Russia was awarded to the former Deputy Minister in 2016 for the logistics operation “Syrian Express”. In addition to the Gold Star Hero of Russia and the Order of Merit to the Fatherland, he has also been awarded the Alexander Nevsky Order, the Order of Military Merit and the Order of Honour.
Graziella Giangiulio
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