{"id":1285249,"date":"2025-08-26T13:55:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T10:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/kremlin-mass-arrests-officials-over-border-defense-failure\/"},"modified":"2025-08-26T13:55:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T10:55:08","slug":"kremlin-mass-arrests-officials-over-border-defense-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/kremlin-mass-arrests-officials-over-border-defense-failure\/","title":{"rendered":"Kremlin Mass Arrests Officials Over Border Defense Failure"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russian security forces are conducting a wave of detentions of former and current officials in the regions bordering Ukraine. As the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) notes<\/a> , the Kremlin is trying to shift responsibility for the military defeat in the Kursk region in August 2024 onto the regional authorities.<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to analysts, the acting deputy governor of the Kursk region, Vladimir Bazarov, was detained on August 25. He is accused of embezzling funds allocated for the construction of defense facilities in the border areas of the Belgorod region – precisely during his work in the administration. The head of the Kursk region, Alexander Khinshtein, said that Bazarov allegedly embezzled more than one billion rubles – about $12.4 million.<\/p>\n

This is not the first high-profile detention: previously, the former governor of Kursk Oblast, Oleksiy Smirnov, as well as the former deputy governors of Bryansk and Belgorod regions, Mykola Symonenko and Rustem Zainullin, were arrested on similar charges.<\/p>\n

ISW also recalls the resignation of Russian Transport Minister Roman Starovoit, who was dismissed by Putin on July 7, just weeks before his death. Starovoit had previously served as governor of the Kursk region.<\/p>\n

Analysts are convinced that these arrests and personnel purges are part of the Kremlin’s political campaign to shift the blame for failures on the front onto local authorities. The report notes that the Russian authorities are deliberately creating a public image of “incompetent officials” in order to relieve pressure on the central leadership after the breakthrough of Ukrainian forces in Kursk.<\/p>\n

As a reminder, on Tuesday, August 6, 2024, the Armed Forces of Ukraine launched a large-scale military operation in the Kursk region of the Russian Federation.<\/a> For the first time since the start of the full-scale war, Ukrainian troops entered enemy territory with an open offensive, occupying more than 1,200 square kilometers. The operation covered dozens of settlements, inflicted significant losses on the enemy, and became a historical precedent \u2014 for the first time a regular army occupied part of the territory of a nuclear state.<\/p>\n

As reported, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Oleksandr Syrsky, stated that the main goal of the Kursk operation \u2014 the distraction of Russian troops and equipment \u2014 had been achieved.<\/a><\/p>\n

Also follow \u201cPryamim\u201d<\/strong> on Facebook<\/a> , Twitter<\/a> , Telegram<\/a> , and Instagram.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Russian security forces are conducting a wave of detentions of former and current officials in the regions bordering Ukraine. As the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) notes , the Kremlin is trying to shift responsibility for the military defeat in the Kursk region in August 2024 onto the regional authorities. According to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":1118792,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76871,76872,76874],"class_list":["post-1285249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-2","category-news-feed","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1285249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1285249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1285249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1118792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1285249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1285249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}