The information is extracted from the Internet; Original Listen to Jiang Fuwei say that Jiang talks about Hainan today
According to information in Russia, Senior General Tatyana Shevtsova, who was officially dismissed from her post as deputy defense minister in mid-June, has secretly defected to the West.
If this news is finally confirmed, Shevtsova will become the highest-ranking official to defect from the Russian side since the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war.
[There is news in Russia that former Deputy Defense Minister General Shevtsova has defected to the West]
According to foreign media, after being dismissed from the post of deputy minister, Shevtsova sorted out a suitcase with a large amount of cash and defected to France on a plane alone. In the process, Shevtsova did not encounter any obstacles from the department.
Rumor has it that in addition to the cash in the suitcase, Shevtsova also used virtual currency transactions to transfer billions of dollars worth of assets overseas. After learning that Shevtsova had fled, the new Russian Defense Minister Belousov was furious.
At present, the news of Shevtsova's defection has not been officially confirmed by Russia, and neither Shevtsova nor other Russian officials have come forward to refute the rumors. The Western camp is also very secretive about the matter, and no country's intelligence services have responded to the relevant information.
[Shevtsova's defection has only been reported by some Russian media so far, and has not been officially confirmed]
If the final facts prove that Shevtsova did defect to the West, her actions are most likely related to the Putin government's anti-corruption campaign against the top of the Russian military.
According to public information, Shevtsova was born in the Russian tax system, served as the deputy head of the Federal Tax Service, and was a confidant of the former Russian Defense Minister Serdyukov, who was transferred to the Russian Ministry of Defense in 2010 and was promoted to deputy minister in the same year, fully responsible for many affairs in the management of Russian military funds.
Originally, when Shoigu took over as defense minister, Shevtsova submitted her resignation, but her ability in the field of financial transfer was also appreciated by Shoigu, and she was able to retain her post as deputy defense minister. It was not until Shoigu was transferred to the post of secretary of the National Security Council and former Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Belousov took charge of the Ministry of Defense that Putin dismissed Shevtsova from her post as deputy minister.
[Shevtsova has a close relationship with Shoigu]
In other words, Shevtsova, who has controlled the "money bag" of the Russian army for 14 years, is not an absolute confidant of Shoigu, but she is not hostile to Shoigu himself and the Shoigu faction in the Russian Ministry of Defense.
This begs the question of whether Ivanov, another Russian deputy defense minister and a key figure in the Shoigu faction, was involved in the corruption case of Shevtsova, and whether the deputy minister also benefited from it. After all, all matters involving financial expenditures in the Russian army need to go through Shevtsova, and Ivanov is likely to share a part of the benefits to ensure that Shevtsova can quickly allocate funds so that she can also get benefits in time.
Even if Shevtsova was not directly involved in Ivanov's corruption case, she is responsible for lax supervision of the use of funds and may be investigated by Russian authorities.
[Another Russian Deputy Defense Minister Ivanov has been arrested for corruption]
In addition, there have long been rumors in Russia that the Shevtsova and his wife own a number of properties in St. Petersburg and other places, including one in Moscow worth more than 2 billion rubles, and at least two Mercedes-Benz cars, and the total assets seem to far exceed the couple's income.
It is possible that Shevtsova was involved in a number of other corruption cases in addition to Ivanov's.
Therefore, it is likely that Shevtsova chose to defect to the West after being dismissed because she was afraid that her corruption problem would explode and go to prison like Ivanov.
If this is the case, there will inevitably be a series of chain reactions.
First of all, Shevtsova has just stepped down as deputy minister, and she still knows what weapons and equipment the Russian army has purchased in the near future, how much money can be used now, and many internal meetings of the Russian army will not avoid Shevtsova, and this deputy minister may know some of the operational goals of the Russian army. If Shevtsova had provided this intelligence information to Western intelligence services in exchange for political asylum, the consequences would have been devastating.
[Shevtsova's position makes her very aware of the Russian army's arms procurement]
For example, if NATO relies on the information provided by Shevtsova to deduce the main offensive direction of the Russian army this summer, the Ukrainian army will be able to adjust its deployment in a targeted manner. To avoid this, the Russian army must revise its own battle plan.
Second, since the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, there has not been such a defection of high-level officials on the Russian side, and Shevtsova's actions will inevitably deal a heavy blow to the morale of Russia, and even drive more people in Russia to defect to the West. Even if the Russian intelligence services can act quickly and successfully carry out the rape operation against Shevtsova, it will be difficult to completely eliminate the negative impact of such defections of high-ranking personnel.
Finally, after signing the dismissal order, Putin personally met with Shevtsova and others, expressed his gratitude for their hard work over the past ten years, and gave Shevtsova and others a chance to retire with dignity. In this case, Shevtsova still chooses to defect to the West, which may anger Putin and trigger a large-scale internal investigation in the future, in which Shoigu and others may be implicated.
[If Shevtsova really defects, it will inevitably anger Putin]
Finally, it should be added that the emergence of rumors of Shevtsova's defection is ultimately due to structural corruption, a long-standing problem in Russia, which has not yet been effectively resolved.
The recent problems have focused on the Ministry of Defense, more because the problems of the Ministry of Defense are more easily exposed in the context of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. The Putin government can only "have a headache and a foot to heal", first ensure the victory of the Russian-Ukrainian war, and then find an opportunity to scrape the bones and cure the poison in the future, and try to completely solve this problem.
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