(Dan Tri) – Ukrainian media said that the country’s intelligence agency may be involved in the arrest of Russian Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov on corruption charges.
Mr. Timur Ivanov (Photo: Tass).
Ukrainska Pravda cited a source from Ukraine’s defense intelligence agency (DIU) as saying that 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.
The source told Ukrainska Pravda that, in March, DIU conducted a special operation that gave them access to a significant amount of confidential information and official documents of Mr. Ivanov.
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.
According to Ukrainska Pravda, Russia previously seemed to suspect that Mr. Ivanov might have committed wrongdoing but did not have enough evidence.
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, TASS news agency quoted a legislative source as saying that this is the result of a long-running corruption investigation, `not yesterday or a month ago`.
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 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.
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
Olivia 
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