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Mystery as Russian General Linked to Shoigu Found Dead
Magomed Khandayev, a Russian Defense Ministry official, has died unexpectedly at the age of 61, state-run agencies reported on Tuesday.
Khandayev had served as head of the state examination department of Russia's Defense Ministry since June 2023. The cause of his death or where he died has not been disclosed.
A number of high-ranking military officials have been arrested since April, including Yuri Kuznetsov, the head of the Russia's Defense Ministry's personnel department. Meanwhile, Sergei Shoigu was replaced as defense minister after holding the position for 12 years, in a surprise shake-up of the department.
Sources in the Kremlin government told the publication that the recent push to "clean up" the Defense Ministry was launched by Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) on Putin's orders.
The sources said the FSB aims to shift the blame for failures in the Ukraine war onto the army, and that the security service wants to control the Defense Ministry budgets. A Kremlin source predicted that hundreds of people within the department would be arrested by the end of the year.
There have been a number of unexplained deaths of prominent Russians since the war broke out, including Pavel Antov, 65, a Russian politician who criticized Putin's invasion of Ukraine, and Ravil Maganov, 67, the chairman of Russian oil giant Lukoil.
