A senior Russian general convicted of illegally selling construction materials will spend at least five years in a penal colony after a military court last week rejected his request to return instead to the front lines in Ukraine.
Ex-Major Gen. Ivan Popov, a former commander of Russia’s 58th Combined Arms Army, was stripped of his military rank and fined about $9,600 after his conviction for large-scale fraud and forgery, British military officials said Wednesday.
Popov was dismissed from his post as 58th CAA commander in July 2023 after his private criticism of how the Russian defense leadership was conducting the war in Ukraine was made public. He was later arrested on the fraud and forgery charges, UK officials said Wednesday on X in their latest assessment of the battlefield conditions in Ukraine.
British officials said corruption is rampant in the Russian system, with punishment more often applied as a political tool than an attempt to enforce the rule of law.
“There is a long history of the Russian regime using corruption charges, real or invented, to remove or punish internal critics or those who have angered more powerful elite figures,” they said.
