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Russia Military Corruption

One of the reasons for the military failures and heavy losses of the Russian army in the special military operation in Ukraine in 2022 was the high level of corruption. Combat training was more and more carried out on paper, and new weapons looked modern only at exhibitions. The armed forces of the Russian Federation in fact turned out to be an army from the last century.

Corruption (from latin corrumpere “to corrupt”, lat. corruptio “bribery, venality; damage, distortion, decomposition; corruption”) is a term that usually denotes the use by an official of his powers and the rights entrusted to him , as well as the official status associated with this authority, opportunities, connections for personal gain, contrary to law and moral principles. Corruption is also called bribery of officials, their corruption, corruption, which is typical for mafia states

In early 1999, Yu. Ya. Chaika , Deputy Prosecutor General of Russia , declared that Russia was one of the ten most corrupt countries in the world and that corruption was one of the most destructive forces in the Russian state. In 1999, Academician D.S. Lvov and Doctor of Economics Yu.V. Ovsienko assessed corruption in Russia as “total”. In 2006, First Deputy Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Alexander Buksman stated that , according to some expert estimates , the volume of the corruption market in Russia is estimated at more than 240 billion US dollars.

Lieutenant General Yury Kuznetsov, who headed the personnel directorate of Russia's Defense Ministry, was arrested in a corruption case after more than $1 million in cash and valuables were found during a search at his residence amid an ongoing crackdown on top military officials in Russia. Kuznetsov is suspected of receiving a bribe from a commercial entity in exchange for an unspecified favor, Svetlana Petrenko, a spokeswoman for the Investigative Committee wrote on social media on 14 May 2024. Kuznetsov was appointed to his position in May 2023. From 2010 until his appointment to his last post, he served as the chief of the eighth directorate of the Russian Armed Forces' General Staff which is responsible for the protection of classified information related to the Defense Ministry. Media reports quoted unnamed sources as saying that Kuznetsov’s arrest is related to that period of his career.

Russian Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov was detained on suspicion of taking a bribe. The Russian Investigative Committee reported this on 23 April 2024. The department did not provide any other details. According to the Ministry of Defense website, Timur Ivanov is 49 years old. In 1999-2012 he worked at enterprises of the fuel and energy complex, then in the government of the Moscow region. From 2013 to 2016, he served as General Director of Oboronstroy. In May 2016, by decree of the Russian President, he was appointed Deputy Minister of Defense. Timur Ivanov oversees issues of housing for troops, construction and overhaul of ministry facilities and military mortgages. He also dealt with the construction of the main temple of the Armed Forces.

Dara Massicot aked "Was Ivanov was dipping into the actual MOD till , instead of oligarch shell companies like the others? Did he cross some informal boundary he was not supposed to cross? or made some enemies with family construction ties in the MOD?

In December 2022, the team of opposition politician Alexei Navalny published an investigation about the family of Timur Ivanov. This material said that Ivanov and his wife Svetlana spent over a million euros on vacation, renting villas and yachts, jewelry and clothes, and the personal bills of the official’s wife were paid by a company engaged in the restoration of the Ukrainian Mariupol destroyed as a result of hostilities.

Law enforcement officers on 25 July 2024 detained the general director of the Military Construction Company of the Defense Ministry, Andrei Belkov. He was suspected of abuse of power in the execution of a state defense order, namely, the purchase of a tomograph at inflated prices during the period when he headed the Main Military Construction Directorate for Special Facilities, Kommersant writes. The claims against Belyakov from the legal side may not end there - his work was supervised by Timur Ivanov, who was previously detained on suspicion of large-scale corruption in the military department.

Deputy Defense Minister Dmitry Bulgakov was removed from his post right at the beginning of the mobilization, when the catastrophic failures in the organization of the army's supplies both before the start of military operations and during the first six months of the operation became obvious even to the blind. On September 24, 2022, he was dismissed from his post "in connection with a transfer to another job" and appointed inspector general of the Office of Inspectors General of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. After his resignation, the general first "sat it out" in a cushy position in the Office of Inspector Generals of the Ministry of Defense, and then the investigators came for him. The general is involved in a corruption case and has been placed in a pretrial detention center. Investigative actions are underway to establish the causes and conditions that contributed to the illegal activity.

The reason for the detention of former Deputy Defense Minister Bulgakov was his lobbying for the interests of the Gryazinsky Food Plant using his official position. Thus, a system was created to supply low-quality food to the troops at inflated prices , even in the conditions of the Second Military District. A case was opened against the management of this food plant under the article on misappropriation of property. The deputy minister received kickbacks from commercial entities whose interests he lobbied for when concluding contracts with the Defense Ministry.

Corruption corrupts the army, has a destabilizing and destructive effect on it, like on any other social or state institution. However, in relation to the army, such a negative impact can have the most catastrophic consequences, primarily for national security. Corruption increases geopolitical threats and risks for the state as a whole. As a result of manifestations of corruption, the world status and competitiveness of Russia are declining. Society is gradually putting up with the phenomena of corruption and corrupt relations, which are gradually becoming the norm of public life. The main result of all these actions is the poor-quality provision of services, overhaul and construction, the supply of products, goods, services, and most importantly weapons and military equipment, which ultimately affects the general state of military security and the defense capability of our state.

Corruption in any sector can be detrimental, but corruption within the defense and security forces, which are tasked with protecting the population and responding to insecurity, is especially damaging. Sometimes the effects of corruption are immediately noticeable: self-serving security forces take advantage of the population they were created to protect. In other cases, the impact of corruption can be obscured by the veil of secrecy and confidentiality often inherent in this sector until a crisis and major failure occurs.

The Russian military survey shows that 20% of the Russian defense budget has flowed into the hands of corrupt people. In 2012, according to Russian media reports, a defense service company affiliated to the Ministry of Defense sold some buildings and plots owned by the Ministry at prices below market prices. For example, some plots were constructed with funds from the Ministry of Defense's state budget before the sale. The high-end villa area was sold, but it was still sold at the price of vacant land. In addition to the defense service company, another logistics support company affiliated to the military is also suspected of extracting funds from the state budget. According to the investigation, the two cases caused losses to the country of more than 6.7 billion rubles, and then Defense Minister Serdyukov also lost his post due to the case.

The Russian army, which was considered the second strongest in the world, suddenly got bogged down in operations on the territory of Ukraine in 2022, where it emerged as the second strongest in Ukraine. Corruption undermines supply lines, supplies of fuel and ammunition no worse than enemy mines. Low morale and hazing do not help in the war. One way or another, experts and military officials agreed on one thing: this chaotic and failed campaign began largely because of corruption

Arrests have been reported in the media related to the disruption of supplies and import substitution in the defense industry. “This, of course, is only the tip of the iceberg, someone somewhere has become impudent, someone somewhere has crossed the road to someone higher. We do not see all the volumes of theft, even in these cases, ”says a specialist from one of the research centers in the field of the military-industrial complex. According to him, it comes to the ridiculous: “They steal everywhere, over there, more than a year ago, even on inflatable mock-up tanks, they tried to steal some millions.”

In Ukraine, units had problems with warm clothes, fuel and spare parts for military equipment, mainly trucks. The problems with clothing and fuel are also confirmed by the intercepted conversations of the Russian military, as well as Western intelligence data. The leak of this information became possible due to another miscalculation - instead of secure communication channels, the Russian military used ordinary phones and Chinese household radios.

The army is one of the most closed state institutions. On the one hand, this is quite justified, given the tasks facing the military organization, on the other hand, it creates favorable conditions for arbitrariness and corruption. Today, corruption is one of the most pressing problems for Russia's state military organization. Information about manifestations of corruption in the military service sphere is contained both in the periodical press, scientific and journalistic literature, and in the statistics of military justice bodies and data from sociological surveys.

Corruption is a complex social phenomenon that has various forms of manifestation that are not always obvious. It would be wrong to understand corruption only as the commission of corruption-related crimes. Experts quite rightly point out that corruption manifests itself in a whole range of offenses. These are crimes of a corruption orientation, and administrative offenses, and disciplinary offenses, and civil dereliction.

Typical manifestations of corruption that take place in the army include bribery, theft of property (fraud, misappropriation and embezzlement), abuse of official authority, patronage in obtaining a position or transfer to a desired duty station, etc.

In January 2011, in an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda , Chief Military Prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky, answering a question about corruption in the army, admitted that its scale was "sometimes amazing." “Sometimes it seems that people have simply lost their sense of proportion and conscience. The amount of embezzlement is often shocking,” Fridinsky said.

He called the criminal case against a group of officials of the Main Military Medical Directorate and the State Order Directorate of the Russian Ministry of Defense an example of this kind. Representatives of these structural divisions of the military department signed a state contract with a commercial firm for the supply of medical equipment in the amount of more than 26 million rubles. “As we found out, the cost of the equipment purchased from merchants was overstated by more than three times, and the state suffered damage by more than 17 million rubles.""

Most banks working with the money of the Ministry of Defense are involved in shadow operations for cashing out and withdrawing capital. In fact, no one needs real financial control and the fight against corruption, since this contradicts the ideology and interests of the “offshore kleptocratic aristocracy” ruling in Russia, whose activities are primarily aimed at personal enrichment and ultimately undermine the foundations of state and national security.

According to the military personnel themselves, the most common forms of corruption in military service today are: the provision of reciprocal services and patronage in the promotion of friends, relatives, etc. (38% of respondents); receiving and giving bribes, gifts (36.4%); committing theft using their powers (26.6%); use of official position and powers to obtain housing, awards, vouchers, other benefits and privileges (23.8%); "kickbacks" when concluding government contracts (13.3%). According to other data, military personnel indicate that they receive remuneration from individuals and legal entities in connection with the performance of official duties (70.1% of respondents); use for purposes not related to the performance of official duties, means of material and technical and other support, other state property, as well as their transfer to other persons (58%); engaging in other paid activities, with the exception of scientific, pedagogical and other creative activities (49.4%); entrepreneurial activities, participation in the management of commercial organizations (43.1%).

Thus, not all manifestations of corruption that are widespread today in the field of military service are criminally punishable, many of them relate to other offenses, and some generally lie in the field of ethics, but in any case, as experts rightly point out, all these manifestations testify to the presence in the legal consciousness of employees of ideas, views, feelings and beliefs that allow corrupt behavior in military service and in connection with military service.

In addition to corruption manifestations of an economic nature, the sphere of military service is also characterized by such corruption manifestations as protectionism, favoritism and nepotism. Accordingly, vacant positions in the military service are quite often assigned to "their own people" (protégés), who have certain preferences (advantages) associated with the patronage of high-ranking commanders. In turn, promotion to high military positions with low professional and moral qualities of the subject of such a career causes a chain reaction of the spread of non-professionals among the staff. Candidates for promotion are selected not on the basis of professional criteria, but on the basis of personal devotion to leadership and psychological fit.

V.M. Koryakin defines the concept of corrupt protectionism and its varieties as applied to the military environment in the following way. Corrupt protectionism is the selection of military personnel for military positions not on the basis of business and professional qualities, but on the basis of acquaintance, blasphemy, patronage, for illegal remuneration. Corrupt favoritism is a situation in which military personnel policy is determined by the influence of favorites, favorites. Corrupt nepotism - official patronage of relatives and their people, the so-called "nepotism".

The consequence of such a personnel policy is the recruitment of non-professionals, random people, focused on obtaining from such activities, first of all, any benefits and advantages, and this, in turn, further provokes crime and corruption. in military service. In this regard, situations very often arise when, after the appointment of a person to a military position, it turns out that this person, in terms of his professional qualities and level of training, does not meet the qualification requirements provided for this position, or, in terms of his moral and business qualities, is not able to effectively perform official duties. duties, or commits offenses incompatible with being in this position.

In this regard, as some experts note, when analyzing the causes and conditions that contribute to the preservation of a high level of corruption crimes in the military organization of the state, it is necessary to pay attention to such a reason for this phenomenon as omissions and costs in the activities of personnel authorities in the selection and appointment of military personnel for military positions with high corruption risks, i.e. the likelihood of a military official committing corruption offenses related to his official position.

The legislation of the Russian Federation provides for a number of measures aimed at curbing the possibility of corruption. Thus, Article 12 of the Federal Law “On Combating Corruption” assigns an obligation to an employer when hiring a citizen (employment or civil law contract) who filled the positions of state or municipal service provided for by the regulatory legal acts of the Russian Federation, within two years after his dismissal from the state or the municipal service to report within ten days on the conclusion of such an agreement to the employer of the state or municipal employee at his last place of service.

Prevention of corruption offenses in military and labor collectives, as well as the identification and elimination of the causes and conditions that contributed to their commission, remains a priority area of activity for officials of the Russian Ministry of Defense.

Main tasks for 2021-2024:

• increasing the efficiency of work on identifying possible corruption risks in the activities of military command and control bodies, in the implementation of the functions assigned to them, systematizing such risks and developing measures aimed at eliminating the causes and conditions for their occurrence;
• increasing the efficiency of control, supervision and verification activities of the department in the field of prevention of corruption offenses;
• improvement of work on consideration in the bodies of military administration of citizens' appeals about the facts of possible corruption offenses, as well as forms and methods of anti-corruption information work. Prevention of repeated appeals of citizens;
• building up the structure of units (introduction of separate positions) for the prevention of corruption and other offenses, including in the troops (forces), military educational institutions, military medical institutions of the department;
• carrying out by units for the prevention of corruption and other offenses of activities aimed at identifying cases of non-compliance by civil servants with the requirements of the legislation on the prevention and settlement of conflicts of interest, as well as bringing the perpetrators to legal liability;
• taking measures to improve the efficiency of implementing the requirements of the legislation on the prevention and settlement of conflicts of interest in military command and control bodies, military units, institutions and organizations created to fulfill the tasks assigned to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation;
• providing training on additional professional programs in the field of combating corruption for civil servants whose job responsibilities include combating corruption, participation in the procurement of goods, works, services, as well as persons who have entered the public service (work) for the first time.

The systemic complexity of overcoming corruption in the Russian Federation is due to the low level of the moral and ethical state of society and the state. The difficulty in the fight against corruption in the field of state security is actually determined by the fact that Russia is a state with an information closed system and is simply a "hotbed" of corruption, bribery and embezzlement of budget funds. Therefore, in today's environment, the current state of state mechanisms is key in creating and shaping the principles and culture of combating corruption.

Corruption increases the level of instability and the risk of conflict by undermining the legitimacy and credibility of state institutions as well as of peacekeeping and state-building interventions. Post-conflict states, or states emerging from conflict, are particularly vulnerable to corruption, due to the lack of good governance infrastructures, which makes it difficult to detect, disrupt, or bring about successful prosecutions against those who are involved in activities such as bribery, extortion, false accounting, and embezzlement. Where corruption is rife, it is widely acknowledged that funds intended for country stabilization projects often do not reach their intended recipients.

This, in part, is the reason that tackling corruption has become a high priority in some post-conflict transitions. In addition, anti-corruption efforts, whether direct or indirect, are seen as having a potentially legitimizing and stabilizing effect. However, such measures can only be successful if implemented with strong, high-level leadership, as corruption has the potential to contribute to legitimacy as well as to erode it. Lack of legitimacy is a common feature of fragile states, which have failed to establish good governance.

Poor governance, in turn, results in an environment where corruption and criminality can flourish. Corrupt individuals holding senior public roles of influence are able to abuse their positions to further their own personal goals and accumulate personal wealth, to the detriment of the people who they are intended to serve. This results in instability through the inevitable sense of injustice and desperation that develops amongst the citizens of that regime, which can drive populations to civil war and leaves citizens susceptible to crime and radicalization, both as perpetrators and as victims.