Eaten by corruption
Russia’s army isn’t just fighting Ukraine
From Sarah Platz
4/28/2022, 3:48 p.m
Russian tanks are stranded because they are running out of fuel and Moscow can hardly keep up with supplying its soldiers. Russia’s military is showing enormous weaknesses in this war. The army is not short of money. But on the integrity.
May 9 is approaching, but Russia is far from a military victory in Ukraine. On this date, the “Day of Victory” over Nazi Germany, Russian President Vladimir Putin probably wanted to announce military success against the neighboring country, since he assumed the invasion would start quickly. Putin certainly underestimated the Ukrainians’ will to defend themselves and the support from the West. However, his troops also struggle with homegrown problems.
According to consistent reports, Russian soldiers often wait in vain for sufficient supplies of food and ammunition. Videos show working tanks lying in the middle of the terrain because they have apparently run out of fuel. The tires of other wheeled vehicles were torn off, which indicates “that these systems were not moved for a long period of time,” military economist Marcus Keupp told ntv.de. The Russian army seems to have problems with the most basic things – even though it is considered one of the strongest in the world. “One does wonder where the maintenance money went,” says Keupp, expressing a suspicion. “Possibly in the pockets of local politicians and local commanders.”
In fact, systematic corruption in the Russian military could be one reason Russian troops are failing to achieve decisive successes in Ukraine. “Corruption at the operational level impedes Russian logistics, resulting in soldiers being poorly supplied and equipped,” writes Polina Belyafova of Tufts International Relations University in the US newspaper Politico. This weakens military efficiency. For example, at the start of the invasion, there were reports of Russian soldiers being sent to Ukraine with ready meals and dry rations that have expired since 2015. Around 92 percent of the companies responsible for supplying the Russian military are loud “Forbes Russia” in connection with Yevgeny Prigozhin. The oligarch is not only a close confidant of the Russian president and is considered the “Chef of the Kremlin”, he is also the patron of the Wagner mercenary group.
The business of food rations and fuel
According to opposition politician Alexej Navalny, he is said to have received the orders from the Ministry of Defense by forming a cartel and manipulating the state tender process. While Prigozhin now gets several billion rubles for catering, reported Russian mediathat the quality of the meals is worse than in prisons. The portions are unreasonably small and some are contaminated with salmonella and coli bacteria. There are also indications that food rations are not being distributed to the troops in Ukraine, but are being traded on the black market. “While Russian soldiers starve and break into Ukrainian houses to beg for bread, Prigozhin’s ‘unsaleable’ military food rations are offered for sale for three dollars a can on Russia’s eBay sites,” writes Hristo Grozev of the investigative group Bellingcat.
Russian troops also often seem to lack fuel during war – and that in a country that is rich in oil and gas. “It is plausible that the long-standing tradition of corruption in the fuel supply slowed the pace of Russia’s advance in Ukraine,” Belyafova writes. “Fuel is already considered a second currency in the Russian military.” This is made possible by the lack of control of fuel consumption. In fact, there are always reports of army employees making a lot of money selling petrol or diesel. So reported the news agency Tass In 2019, for example, about three soldiers in Sevastopol, annexed Crimea, who stole 126 tons of fuel and sold it for 3.6 million rubles.
The Russian army hardly differs from other institutions in the country. Russia lies loud “Transparency International” ranked 136th in the world when it comes to combating the misuse of public funds. The non-governmental organization certifies that the country has a high risk of corruption – especially in the defense sector. The media in Russia are now only allowed to report on the military what is announced by official bodies. However, the problem of corruption in the army has long been common knowledge among Russians, said Russian journalist Maxim Kireev on MDR. A particularly “popular way of stealing money from the military” is the soldiers on paper.
It is not uncommon for army superiors to collect pay for employees who only exist on paper. Kireev reports on Lieutenant Colonel Vadim Kazaryan, who registered two recruits as contract soldiers after their service in the army, even though they left the army. At the time, the judicial authorities estimated the damage at 20,000 euros.
Schoigu’s “fictitious” numbers
Financial damage is one thing. However, this also means that the exact number of soldiers remains unclear. More soldiers are now needed in the war against Ukraine than in the smaller operations of the Russian military before. Possible gaps could be noticed. Because of this, “commanders may try to fill any gaps with conscripts,” Kireev reported. Putin had already confirmed the use of conscripts shortly after the start of the war, but justified this with “mistakes that should be ruled out in the future”.
The Russian army is weakened by theft – although it should actually have been extensively modernized in the past few decades. Especially after the 2008 war in Georgia, Russia found that its troops were not equipped for protracted, modern-day conflicts. The defense minister at the time, Anatoly Serdyukov, was supposed to remedy the situation and reform the military, which he implemented quite successfully. However, the minister also fought corruption and deals with anti-competitive arms manufacturers, such as Kamil Galeev of the US Woodrow Wilson Center Twitter writes. “The number of his opponents grew so much that he was deposed in 2012.” His successor, Sergei Shoigu, knew how to secure the goodwill of everyone involved by not taking action against corruption and by not messing with arms suppliers. This is how Russia got rid of the idea of efficiency.
Shoigu began to regularly publish reports about the successful procurement of armaments. For example, the Ministry of Defense put the “proportion of rearmament”, i.e. the proportion of new military material, at over 70 percent in January 2022. However, these numbers are “absolutely fictitious,” the report said Organized Crime and Corruption Project. “We see new models of equipment – missiles, tanks, submarines – but only in isolated cases,” the organization quoted a military researcher as saying. This could explain why the old Soviet systems are mainly used in Ukraine.
It plays into the hands of Ukraine
There are many technological innovations, including some that could increase the precision of Russian attacks, writes Belyafova in Politico. However, these “never came about in the Russian military due to bribery, embezzlement and fraud”. For example, in 2012 a Russian defense contractor received around $26 million to develop an aircraft system to intercept non-strategic missiles, the local press reported.
However, the research never got off the ground because the company signed fraudulent contracts with shell companies, some of which were registered to the addresses of public toilets in Russia’s Samara region, Belyafova reported.
All of this plays into the hands of Ukraine. So thanked Oleksandr Novikov, head of Ukraine’s anti-corruption agency, already told Shoigu that the misappropriation of public funds is making an “invaluable contribution” to his country’s defense. Certainly the corruption problem in the Russian military will not be decisive for the war. But it is a significant deficit on the Russian side, because it weakens its logistics. Bellingcat’s Grozev put it more drastically: “Corruption is destroying Russia – and could save Ukraine.”