MOSCOW (Reuters) – A former Russian commander who criticised Moscow’s military leadership in Ukraine was sentenced to five years in prison on Thursday after a military court found him guilty of large-scale fraud, Russian news agencies reported.
Ivan Popov, a former major general who led Russia’s 58th army and who fought in Chechnya and later commanded Russian units in southern Ukraine, was found guilty of stealing more than 130 million roubles ($1.56 million) of metal products intended for building fortifications along the Ukrainian frontline.
Popov’s lawyer told the RIA news agency he would appeal the verdict. Popov was quoted by the Kommersant newspaper last month as complaining about his “unjustified prosecution.”
The former military man was tried alongside a businessman, Sergei Moiseyev. Another suspected accomplice, Lieutenant General Oleg Tsokov, was killed in Ukraine in 2023.
Several top defence ministry officials have faced criminal charges as part of a sweeping anti-corruption probe that has shaken up the Russian military establishment over the past year, but Popov and his supporters say his case was different and that he was being punished for speaking out.
Following a failed mutiny in June 2023 by Wagner mercenaries against Russia’s defence establishment, Popov’s concerns about how Moscow was waging its war in Ukraine were made public in a voice message which was released by a Russian lawmaker that July.
In it, he was heard complaining about the deaths of Russian soldiers from Ukrainian artillery, alleging that the Russian army lacked proper weapons and reconnaissance capabilities to spot enemy artillery.
“There was a tough situation with the senior bosses in which it was necessary either to keep quiet and be a coward or to say it the way it is,” Popov said in the voice message.
Popov said he was dismissed shortly afterwards. Upon his arrest in May 2024, popular Russian military bloggers spoke out in his defence, casting him as a talented general who had been punished for speaking truth to power.
As his trial neared its end last month, Popov penned an open letter to President Vladimir Putin asking to be sent to the front in exchange for the Kremlin leader quashing his criminal case.
Baza, a Telegram channel close to Russia’s security services, said Popov had repeated his plea on Thursday.
($1 = 83.4955 roubles)
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Lucy Papachristou; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
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