Anatomy of a purge: Cleanup at the Ministry of Defense and the future of Putinism

by Dr. Ilya Matveev, Public Sociology Laboratory

On 6 May 2026, Viktor Shkolyk, the deputy director of a subsidiary company of the Russian Ministry of Defense, was arrested for corruption. Shkolyk’s arrest is the latest in a long line of dismissals and criminal charges brought against ministry officials. Since spring 2024, a completely unprecedented sweep has targeted high-ranking officials, including several deputies of former Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. According to Proekt.media, nearly one-third of the ministry’s leadership team has been fired or imprisoned. Shoigu himself was moved to the post of Secretary of the Security Council – an important position in principle, yet he is completely alone there. His patronage network has been destroyed. The only person he had brought with him from the ministry, General Pavel Konovalchik, was eventually transferred to another post.

There are few cases in the history of Putinism that are even remotely comparable to the purge of Shoigu’s ministry. After Dmitry Medvedev relinquished the presidency and became prime minister in 2012, some of his close associates were pushed out of power or imprisoned. However, this process spanned several years. For example, Ziyavudin Magomedov, a businessman close to Medvedev, was arrested in 2018, six years after Medvedev ceased being president. This process was also much smaller in scale compared to the purge of Shoigu’s ministry. The ouster of some powerful and well-connected regional leaders, most notably Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, also led to dismissals and arrests, though not on the scale of Shoigu’s purge. The only truly comparable event is perhaps the imprisonment of Komi Republic Governor Vyacheslav Gaizer and 18 officials from his administration. They were all accused of belonging to the same criminal organization, with Gaizer as its leader. However, politically, Gaizer is not even remotely in the same league as Shoigu; the latter is one of the most influential people in Russia and was instrumental in establishing Putin’s regime. The combination of Shoigu’s prominence in national politics and the thoroughness of his ministry's purge is unique in Putin’s Russia. As such, it sheds light on the nature and prospects of wartime Putinism.

In a recent book, Random Dictatorships: The Unpredictability of Authoritarian Politics in Eurasia (2026), political scientist Alexander Libman systematically lays out arguments explaining why authoritarian regimes are so opaque and difficult to study. According to Libman, maintaining secrecy gives dictators multiple advantages while power is concentrated in informal networks rather than formal institutions. These networks do not act according to written rules, such as those in a constitution, and certainly do not publish their membership lists. Consequently, empirical data on the inner workings of authoritarian regimes is scarce, which often makes their behavior unpredictable to outside observers.

Scholars attempt to manage the unpredictability of authoritarian regimes by relying on two opposing premises. One is the assumption of the regime’s rationality and efficiency in maintaining power. This school of thought suggests that dictatorships mostly make decisions that are optimal in terms of achieving their goals. The other camp, on the contrary, suggests that dictatorships are prone to making mistakes due to a lack of information, the personal biases of authoritarian rulers, and the negative selection of bureaucrats and advisors. In effect, one group of scholars predicts that dictatorships will largely act in their own best interest, while the other predicts that they will constantly fail, resulting in their ultimate undoing. However, according to Libman, both schools of thought are right some of the time. Dictatorships can effectively maintain power yet also make mistakes. The ultimate question is which is more likely at any given moment, and the answer is always elusive. It is useful to examine the purge in the Russian Ministry of Defense through Libman’s conceptual lens: the event itself is so visible and unprecedented that it may reveal new information about the nature and prospects of the Russian regime.

First, the massive cleanup at the Ministry of Defense appears rational from the perspective of maintaining the Kremlin’s power and prosecuting the war in Ukraine. Two goals can be identified here: one apparent and the other implied. The first goal is technocratic. Shoigu’s ministry was corrupt and inefficient. Apart from poor operational planning and Ukraine’s staunch resistance, Russia’s defeats during the first phase of the war in 2022 can be explained by the state of the army under Shoigu. As part of the general mobilization of the state apparatus during wartime, it was logical for the Kremlin to attempt to reform its underperforming defense ministry. Putin himself acknowledged this goal, stating that the nomination of economist Andrei Belousov as Shoigu’s replacement was due to rising defense expenditures. According to Putin, an effective use of the growing funds by the Russian military required new and competent management. Consequently, Shoigu’s most egregious bribe-taking deputies, such as Timur Ivanov — whose lavish lifestyle was exposed by Alexei Navalny in 2022 — were replaced by officials from the Ministry of Finance and the Accounts Chamber. These new bureaucrats were competent and had been trained in the generally more capable financial-economic wing of the Russian government.

At the moment, it is hard to say how successful Belousov and his team are at reforming the military. According to Belousov himself, his efforts are focused on streamlining infrastructure and logistics. Military reform in Russia is an immense policy challenge, covering several million people in the army and military-industrial complex, as well as hundreds of billions of dollars in expenses. Belousov’s success is far from guaranteed; however, cleaning up Shoigu’s corrupt and incompetent staff is a necessary prerequisite for reform to have any chance of succeeding.

Moreover, there is a second discernible goal in the Kremlin’s actions. If efficiency were the only rationale for the cleanup, dismissals would suffice. However, the purge went further, involving dozens of arrests and criminal convictions with prison terms of up to 19 years. The intention is apparently populist. Imprisoned generals are a sacrifice to radical nationalist and imperialist circles whose anger during the war years was often directed at Shoigu and his allies. Evgeny Prigozhin expressed some of this anger during his coup attempt in 2023. Putin effectively deployed a two-pronged strategy: first, he got rid of Prigozhin; then, he partly satisfied Prigozhin’s demands by punishing Shoigu and other high-profile defense ministry officials. The gleeful response from voenkory (“war correspondents”) and the “Z” community proves that the strategy was effective. Beyond the radicalized milieu, high-profile corruption cases (“populist repressions”) could bolster the regime’s legitimacy among the general public, though there is currently no data proving this.

Purging the defense ministry appears to be a sensible move from the regime’s point of view, revealing Putin to be a rational dictator. However, there is another side to this story.

First, the ministry’s reform reproduces Putin’s typical approach, which prioritizes political balance over technocratic efficiency. While some leadership roles in the ministry have been given to competent civil servants, other nominations reveal a different pattern. For instance, Belousov’s deputies include Pavel Fradkov, son of Mikhail Fradkov – prime minister in the 2000s, Putin loyalist, and security service veteran – as well as Anna Tsivileva, Putin’s niece, who has a history of corruption in the Kemerovo region, where she and her husband, Governor Sergey Tsivilev, constituted the ultimate power couple. While Fradkov and Tsivileva ensure the Kremlin’s political control over the ministry, their actions could potentially interfere with Belousov’s reform efforts. Belousov himself is not a political heavyweight and will not easily prevail over the likes of Fradkov and Tsivileva in the event of a conflict. According to analyst Mikhail Komin, the Kremlin instituted “collective management” of the defense ministry by different powerful interests: the economic technocracy, the intelligence services, the military-industrial complex, and Putin’s inner circle. Would such an arrangement be effective at rooting out corruption and inefficiencies? There is no concrete evidence at the moment, but it is reasonable to assume that problems might arise.

Secondly, and more importantly, the purge changes not only the ministry itself but also the overall political context in Russia. Shoigu’s removal is another step toward granting all-powerful status to one institution: the FSB. The FSB coordinated the purge, and unlike his predecessor, Belousov will not be able to fight it politically. This is where Putin’s seemingly rational decision becomes problematic. The FSB’s omnipotence endangers the regime.

There is a reason why Putin avoided such purges in the past. Attacking political heavyweights could cause Putin’s elites to conclude that they would be better off without him. If Putin could convince the elites that the purge of the defense ministry would not spread throughout the government, there would be no serious discontent. However, with an all-powerful FSB, making a credible commitment to avoid broader elite upheaval is more difficult. As political writer Alexander Baunov has put it, the special services are "dizzy with new powers". The FSB is attacking elites right and left. For example, in March 2026, the FSB arrested Anton Serikov, a former presidential administration employee who is currently involved in coordinating ideologically oriented educational efforts. In effect, no one is safe, not even those in the government’s highest levels, such as the presidential administration. This repetition of Stalinist terror on a smaller scale, but with the same underlying logic, might keep the elites in line through fear alone. However, it introduces administrative chaos and disruption to the affected parts of the government apparatus, generating quiet discontent among Putin’s high-level supporters outside the FSB.

Moreover, the FSB’s approach to the Russian society is entirely one-dimensional and consists of eliminating threats, real or imagined. The FSB’s predominance may produce unnecessary discontent among the population at large, not just the elites. This has indeed occurred in recent months with the implementation of the FSB’s long-term vision of the “sovereign internet” through a series of new restrictive measures. As a result of these restrictions, the Levada Center’s indicator of general acceptance of the status quo (the belief that the “country is moving in the right direction”) has fallen to pre-war levels. This could have been avoided had the FSB’s agenda been less prominent in national politics.

In conclusion, the purge of the Defense Ministry seems rational at first. However, by unleashing populist repressions and further empowering the FSB, it creates a dynamic that can potentially be harmful to the regime. Stalinist terror did not encounter serious resistance before Stalin’s death. However, when Stalin finally died, his own elites quickly dispensed with the one person who personified the terror: Lavrentiy Beria. Subsequently, during Khrushchev’s reign, the Soviet elites collectively decided that a situation in which an all-powerful special service terrorizes the state apparatus should not be repeated. The scale of the current populist repressions is, of course, incomparable to Stalin’s period. Nevertheless, this is precisely why, this time, the elites might not wait for Putin’s death to address the issue of the FSB.