Is Ukrainian intelligence involved in the arrest of Russian Deputy Defense Minister?

Ukrainska Pravda Citing a source from Ukraine’s defense intelligence agency (DIU), Russia’s arrest of Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov appears to be related to a previous operation carried out by DIU.

The Russian Investigative Committee said that Deputy Minister Ivanov was arrested by the Russian Federal Security Service on the evening of April 23 on suspicion of accepting large bribes. If convicted, Mr. Ivanov could be sentenced to 15 years in prison.

The source told Ukrainska Pravda that, in March, the DIU conducted a special operation that gave them access to a significant amount of Mr. Ivanov’s secret information and official documents.

According to the source, although Russia responded and tried to secure the relevant servers, the cyber attack was successful and achieved its goal.

Immediately after Ukrainian intelligence gained access to Mr. Ivanov’s documents, Russian investigative agencies opened an investigation, the source said. Ukrainian media said that this seems to be the reason Mr. Ivanov was arrested because Russia investigated information showing that he committed violations.

According to Ukrainska Pravda, Russia previously seemed to suspect that Mr. Ivanov might have committed wrongdoing but did not have enough evidence. Media coverage of the cyber attack and DIU’s access to classified information appear to be the reason for Mr. Ivanov’s arrest.

Russia has not commented on this information.

According to Russian media, Moscow’s arrest of Mr. Ivanov seemed quite surprising because a few hours earlier, he had still participated in an extended meeting with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and senior military leaders.

On the other hand, news agency TASS quoting a legislative source, this is the result of a long-running corruption investigation, “not yesterday or a month ago”. News page lenta.ru said that the investigation has lasted at least 5 years.

Russia has not released detailed information about the incident as well as questions related to Mr. Ivanov’s alleged wrongdoing.

Mr. Ivanov, 48 years old, was born in Moscow. He has long been involved in the country’s energy and construction sectors, and has worked at several prominent state-owned companies.

He led the military construction contractor Oboronstroy, a company whose main purpose was to build housing for military personnel from 2013 to 2016.

He was then appointed to his current position, where he oversees military construction within the Russian Ministry of Defense.

After the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Mr. Ivanov was said to be in charge of projects to rebuild Mariupol, a city that Russia took control of in Ukraine.

In recent times, Ukraine has repeatedly announced cyber attacks against Russia. Recently, DIU announced in March that Kiev’s cyber experts had gained access to the server of the Russian Ministry of Defense and stolen a lot of data about military leadership, orders, reports and directives. of Moscow.

The classified information obtained by Ukraine includes data in more than 2,000 structural units of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Kiev announced at the time.

In January, Ukraine said it had taken down the server of the Russian Ministry of Defense.

“On January 30, due to a cyber attack campaign, the server of the Ministry of Defense of Russia, which was used for special communications, stopped working. The enemy’s cyber attack campaign was led by carried out by the Ukrainian Defense Newspaper,” the Ukrainian Military Intelligence Service (GUR) announced on January 30.