In early December, the Naberezhnye Chelny court placed former Nizhnekamsk district head and ex-mayor of Nizhnekamsk Ramil Mullin in pretrial detention. Investigators say he was involved in a scheme tied to payments for recruiting people into contract military service and sending them to war.
According to investigators, payments of 100,000 and 150,000 rubles were processed for 287 people, although those individuals allegedly enlisted on their own and were added to reports retroactively. Mullin is accused of fraud and abuse of office and faces up to 10 years in prison. Earlier, Nizhnekamsk official Ildar Safiullin was placed under house arrest on similar charges.
Alyona Vandysheva, head of Transparency International Russia, described the case as a standard corruption mechanism: budget funds allocated for recruiting contract soldiers were routed through municipal bodies and then transferred to a contractor under a recruitment agreement. Investigators believe no actual recruitment took place and that the paperwork was signed simply to spend the allocated funds.
Mullin denies guilt and says that, on the contrary, he borrowed money from relatives and friends to fulfill recruitment targets allegedly set by Tatarstan’s leadership: 1,000 people in 2024 and 750 in 2025. He says he personally borrowed 25 million rubles and has already repaid more than 21 million.
The outlet notes that corruption cases tied to wartime spending have become more frequent in Russia. According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, the number of corruption crimes rose from about 35,000 in 2022 to 38,500 in 2024, and in the first quarter of 2025 the figure was 24% higher than a year earlier.
Sources interviewed by Novaya Gazeta Europe do not rule out a political background as well. Before his arrest, Mullin was already at the center of a scandal after issuing a housing certificate to a large migrant family from Tajikistan, drawing the attention of Investigative Committee chief Alexander Bastrykin. Political analyst Ruslan Aisin also linked the pressure on the former mayor to his visible role in Tatarstan politics and his reputation for a nationally oriented agenda.