1/ What do jewelry, cash, antiques, watches, mansions and Jennifer Lopez have in common? They've all been sought after by corrupt Russian military officials. In this second 🧵 in a series, I'll look at high-level corruption among Russia's military elite.
3/ Corruption and incompetence have been hallmarks of Russian generalship for centuries. At the 1854 Battle of the Alma, Lt Gen Vasily Kiryakov got drunk on champagne and ordered his regiment to fire on what he thought was the French cavalry. It was actually his own Kiev Hussars.
4/ The defeated Russian commander, Prince Alexander Menshikov, fled from the victorious Allies. The French later discovered in his carriage "letters from the Tsar, 50,000 francs, pornographic French novels, the general’s boots and some ladies’ underwear."
5/ Corruption at all levels persisted through the Soviet period, before exploding into open view after the fall of the Soviet Union. The Yeltsin era was dominated by so-called "wild" or "gangster" capitalism, in which anything and everything was for sale - at the right price.
6/ The 1990s were the high-water mark for so-called 'general thieves' in Russia, when the military budget was plundered to an unbelievable extent - losses were estimated at over $2 billion. Over 100 generals and admirals were prosecuted.
7/ The prize almost certainly has to go to General Georgy Oleinik, who was jailed in 2002 for illegally transferring $450 million to Ukraine as payment for materials that were never delivered. Most of the money was moved before the contract had even been signed.
8/ This kind of scam has been common at high levels in Russia. Another spectacular case was that of Nikolai Ryabykh, head of the Defence Ministry's facilities department, who was convicted in 2016 with businessman Alexander Elkin for a 118 million ruble contract fraud.
9/ Elkin, Ryabykh and others had billed the ministry for work that was never done. The money was simply stolen. Where did it go? In Elkin's case, he was arrested the day before his 50th birthday, for which he had organised a huge birthday party likely costing millions of rubles.
10/ The party included hiring a palace, antique tablecloths and curtains, gilded candelabra on the tables, fireworks and meeting guests with artists dressed as in the form of royal lackeys. Jennifer Lopez was reportedly hired to give a private performance.
11/ Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov was among Elkin's guests. A few months later, Russian police raided the 13-room luxury Moscow apartment of Yevgeniya Vasileyva, a glamorous 33-year-old blonde. They were surprised to discover Serdyukov was also there, dressed in a bathrobe.
12/ Vasileyva's apartment contained over $3 million in jewelry, cash, antiques and 19th-century artwork which had been "borrowed" from the museum of the Russian Defence Ministry. She was duly put under house arrest while investigations continued.
13/ Even for Russia, this was too big a scandal to overlook. The trail led back to Serdyukov, who served both as the Defence Minister and also chair of Oboronservis, a giant facilities company. Vasileyva was a director of the company, despite her lack of obvious qualifications.
14/ Serdyukov already had a towering reputation for corruption: "he's stolen everything that isn't nailed down", as one subordinate said afterwards. He had appointed a series of attractive young women, dubbed "the Amazons" or "the ladies' battalion", to senior positions.
15/ One such was an aspiring poet named Marina Chubkina, a 31-year-old former TV presenter and aspiring poet. She was given a rank equivalent to major general and was placed in charge of the maintenance of Russian chemical and nuclear facilities.
16/ Serdyukov was fired by Vladimir Putin a few weeks later. He was accused of a variety of scams, but was charged only with "negligence" for ordering the army to build a road from a village to a private country residence. He was amnestied by Putin in 2014.
17/ In all, the corruption scandals surrounding Serdyukov were reported to have cost the Russian government at least 3 billion rubles ($60 million) - and that was likely the tip of the iceberg. It's unlikely that much if any of the money was recovered.
18/ Putin replaced Serdyukov with Sergei Shoigu, previously Russia's minister for emergencies, in 2012. Shoigu - who is one of the architects of the present war in Ukraine - was brought in as a supposedly clean pair of hands.
19/ However, only three years later the Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny's organisation exposed Shoigu as the likely owner of an $18 million luxury mansion outside Moscow. It's registered in the name of his 18-year-old daughter. Shoigu's annual salary is $120,000.
20/ And so it goes. Far from improving under Shoigu's "clean hands", Russia's problem of military corruption has got even worse since Serdyukov's sacking a decade ago, according to the Russian government itself.
21/ In the next thread in this series, I'll look at the social and organisational factors behind the endemic corruption in Russia's armed forces, and highlight the consequences for its military effectiveness. /end
1/ @konrad_muzyka has published an excellent if rather gloomy thread on the current situation in Ukraine. In the interests of helping it to reach a wider audience, I thought an English translation would be useful.
2/ "I invite you to a short thread about the current situation on the frontline. In short, the situation looks very bad and is not expected to improve in the coming weeks.
3/ There are three reasons for the current state of affairs and in principle there is nothing revelatory here, as the problems on the Ukrainian side have been known for a long time: lack of ammunition, manpower, fortifications.
1/ A memorial to the lost sailors of the Russian missile cruiser Moskva has been unveiled in Sevastopol, two years after the ship's sinking on 13 April 2022. However, many relatives and some of the surviving crew, including the captain, were not invited to the ceremony. ⬇️
2/ The memorial is dedicated to the sailors of the 30th Surface Ship Division. It was erected opposite the place in Sevastopol harbour where Moskva used to dock, and was unveiled on Saturday 13 April 2024. Most of those named on it were Moskva crew members.
3/ Photos of the memorial have recently been published. It comprises a slab two meters high and about five meters long, three stones with the names of 20 of the dead crew members and one other sailor at the foot of the slab, and a stone with an engraved image of the ship.
1/ Units from Russia's 'Afrika Korps' are reportedly to be withdrawn from Africa and sent to Russia's Belgorod region on the border with Ukraine. Its organiser, GRU Lieutenant General Andrei Averyanov, is said to be under a cloud for failing to achieve his goals in Africa. ⬇️
2/ The VChK-OGPU Telegram channel reports that preparations are being made to withdraw Afrika Corps detachments and dispatch them to Belgorod, the scene of recent incursions by the Ukraine-supported Russian Volunteer Corps.
3/ The Afrika Korps was created following Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin's death in 2023, as a means of taking over Wagner's operations in Africa and bringing them under the control of the Russian Ministry of Defence.
1/ Russia is considering a return to producing low-quality gasoline to make up for shortages caused by Ukrainian attacks on its oil refineries. However, this is likely to cause damage to vehicles, which owners may find difficult to repair due to a shortage of spare parts. ⬇️
2/ Reuters and the Russian newspaper Kommersant report that the Russian government is considering temporarily suspending fuel environmental standards to enable gasoline to be produced at a lower quality, or to include environmentally damaging octane-boosting additives.
3/ Since 2016, Russia has only allowed the production of at least Euro-5 standard gasoline (a standard set by the European Union which is also in effect in a number of non-EU, Asian and South American countries). Modern vehicles are designed to run only on compliant fuel.
1/ The companies formerly owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin are reportedly undergoing a financial collapse, losing over a billion rubles since his death last year. The Russian Ministry of Defence is no longer buying rotten food from his companies after years of complaints.⬇️
2/ 'We can explain' reports that financial statements for the companies that belonged to Prigozhin – and are mostly now managed by his son Pavel – show that almost all of them fell into the red in 2023. They comprise a mixture of catering and construction firms.
3/ The heart of Prigozhin's business empire was Concord Management and Consulting LLC, the parent organisation of the Concord group of companies, which included catering, construction and media enterprises. CMC LLC and its subsidiaries lost nearly 104 million rubles ($1.1 m).
I had been expecting something like this, but while this is absolutely a legitimate target, many of the workers are de facto enslaved teenage students and African girls who have reportedly been catfished via dating apps. /1