By Nataliya Vasilyeva
A top Russian general was convicted of embezzlement and jailed on Tuesday, state news media reported, in one of the highest-profile cases from a monthslong Kremlin campaign to root out military corruption amid the war in Ukraine.
Timur Ivanov, a general and longtime deputy defense minister who oversaw military construction projects, was detained in April 2024 on charges of taking a 鈥渓arge-scale鈥 bribe 鈥 the first in a string of arrests of senior officers. Mr. Ivanov, who was known as a prot茅g茅 of Sergei K. Shoigu, the former Russian defense minister and a close associate of President Vladimir V. Putin, had pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing.
The arrest of Mr. Ivanov, and other defense officials after him, signaled a turning point in the Kremlin鈥檚 invasion of Ukraine. Coming at a moment of rising war costs and increasing criticism from supporters of the war over the distribution of frontline resources, the moves were seen as an effort by Mr. Putin to improve the management of the war effort.
In delivering the verdict on Tuesday at Moscow City Court, Judge Sergei Podoprigorov sentenced Mr. Ivanov to 13 years in a penal colony and a nearly $1.3 million fine, according to the Russian state news agency Tass. It reported that Mr. Ivanov鈥檚 attorneys said they planned to appeal.