The former commander of the 58th Guards Army of the Russian Armed Forces, Major General Ivan Popov, arrested on fraud charges, will go to war against Ukraine, DW reports. On Wednesday, 9 April, his lawyer Sergei Buynovsky said that his client had filed such a motion, asking the Tambov Garrison Military Court to suspend proceedings in his case.
According to TASS with reference to Buynovsky, the prosecution asked to sentence the general to six years in a general regime colony, as well as deprive him of the rank of major-general and impose a fine of 800,000 rubles.
Meanwhile, Kommersant, citing a source in the security services, reports that Popov will head one of the ‘Storm Z’ detachments formed from prisoners under investigation. Earlier, Popov addressed an open letter to Putin asking him to return to the frontline in Ukraine.
Major General Ivan Popov was arrested in mid-May 2024 on charges of fraud committed by an organised group or on a particularly large scale. According to the investigation, he was involved in the embezzlement in 2023 of over 1.7 thousand tonnes of rolled metal products worth over 130 million rubles, intended for the equipment of engineering defensive structures on the line of contact in the Zaporizhzhya region. In early July, Popov was given a final indictment, to which was added a charge of official forgery.
After the outbreak of Russia’s war against Ukraine, Popov was appointed commander of the 58th Combined Armed Forces Army, responsible for the Zaporozhye direction.