The vice-governor of the Belgorod region was accused of embezzlement of 32 million rubles in the construction of the defense line in the region

The investigation presented to the vice-governor of the Belgorod region Rustem Zaynullin an accusation of a theft of 32 million rubles in the construction of fortifications in the region, TASS reports.

Zainullin was detained on June 21 in the fraud case on an especially large scale (part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code). The next day, the court sent the accused to the investigative insulator. The defense appealed the arrest of the official, but he was left in custody.

According to investigators, Zaynullin in the group and using his official position stole at least 32 million rubles, of which up to four million rubles - personally. These funds were allocated for the construction of fortifications on the border of the Belgorod region with Ukraine.

Zainullin oversee the property and land block in the Government of the Belgorod Region, reported Mediazona. He argued that in October-November 2024 he served in the Bars-Belgorod detachment, whose participants do not go to the war zone.

• They began to build a defense line on the border of the Belgorod region and Ukraine in November 2022. Then the head of the region Vyacheslav Gladkov announced the construction of the "Zacherchny feature". In March of 2023, hestated that the construction was completed. In May 2025, Gladkov said that the audit revealed a violation of 109 million rubles during the construction, and the contractors overestimated the volume of work.
• In March, in Belgorod, in the case of theft during the construction of defensive structures on the border, the director of Stroyinvestrev, Sergey Petryakov, was arrested . According to the local publication, Pepel, a company that was one of the main contractors, overestimated the cost of work and illegally received 11.5 million rubles from the budget.
• Theft during the construction of the defense line on the border with Ukraine is also investigated in the Kursk region. In this case, the former governor of the region Alexei Smirnov was arrested.