The director of Patriot Park, a popular military theme park in Russia’s Moscow region, was arrested on fraud charges on Monday, according to a spokesperson for Russia’s Investigative Committee.
Director of Russia’s ‘military Disneyland’ arrested on fraud charges
Visitors look at the Russian Topol intercontinental ballistic missile in Patriot Park outside Moscow, Russia, 22 August 2017. Photo: EPA / YURI KOCHETKOV
The director of Patriot Park, a popular military theme park in Russia’s Moscow region, was arrested on fraud charges on Monday, according to a spokesperson for Russia’s Investigative Committee.
Vyacheslav Akhmedov. Photo: Social media
Vyacheslav Akhmedov is suspected of embezzling funds from the federal budget earmarked for the park, the spokesperson said, adding that the head of the Defence Ministry’s Main Directorate for Innovative Development, Major General Vladimir Shesterov, had also been arrested in connection with the case.
Dubbed Russia’s “military Disneyland” by some, Patriot Park features interactive displays of Russian and Soviet military equipment, as well as captured Western military vehicles and artillery, and pitches its ultranationalist and militaristic propaganda narratives to visiting families.
Former deputy defence minister Timur Ivanov, who was arrested on corruption charges in April, oversaw the construction of the park, which opened in 2015 to rally patriotic feeling following Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea the year before.
A month after Ivanov’s arrest, law enforcement agents conducted a series of searches at the park. Initially believed to be related to Ivanov’s case, the searches were later revealed to be connected to a case against Akhmedov for allegedly embezzling over 40 million rubles (€430,000), law enforcement agencies later clarified.
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