News
Russia’s former Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov, who was convicted in an embezzlement case last summer, has filed a lawsuit against the Defense Ministry and the Moscow military commissariat over their alleged failure to consider his request to be sent to the war in Ukraine, according to reports by the newspaper Kommersant and the business-focused outlet RBC.
In the suit, Ivanov claims that the agencies have ignored his requests to sign a contract that would send him to the combat zone. He is asking the court to declare the military’s inaction unlawful and to require the defendants “to carry out actions for selection for military service and the establishment of a contract.”
The case, according to Kommersant, was transferred to Moscow’s Meshchansky District Court.
On July 1, 2025, the former deputy defense minister was sentenced to 13 years in a penal colony in an embezzlement case. Later, new charges were brought alleging that he had taken bribes totaling 1.3 billion rubles ($16.9 million) and that he had illegally been in possession of weapons.
Ivanov first asked to be sent to the war while still in pretrial detention at Lefortovo Prison this past summer. At the time, he filed an application to be sent to the combat zone in a role corresponding to his military rank of major. In October, he received a refusal claiming that “there are no positions in his military specialty in the ‘West’ grouping [of forces].” After that, Telegram channels including the Kremlin-linked Mash reported that Ivanov asked to go to war as an assault infantryman. He filed a second application in November but still has not received an answer.