Thread by @ChrisO_wiki

1/ Was corruption implicated in Russia's failure to detect the truck that exploded on the Kerch Bridge to Crimea on 8 October? Reports in the Russian media – and the actions of the Russian government – suggest that all was not well in the bridge's management. Thread ⬇️

2/ Following the explosion, President Putin fired the deputy head of the Ministry of Transport, Alexander Sukhanov. He was responsible for transport security, including of the Crimean bridge. Putin has now reportedly transferred this responsibility to the FSB.

3/ The FSB has not escaped censure. Vlasti reports that Viktor Gavrilov, head of the FSB's T Directorate, was removed from his post. His directorate is responsible for security coverage of transport facilities. He was reportedly replaced by Sergey Demyanishnikov (pictured).

4/ The Kerch bridge's security was managed by the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Department of Departmental Security (UVO) of the Ministry of Transport. The UVO had previously let contracts worth 12 billion rubles ($195.5 million) relating to security measures on the bridge.

5/ The bridge opened in stages between 2018 and 2020. Cars and buses began using it in May 2018, followed by trucks in October 2018. Passenger trains began running in December 2019 and, from 30 June 2020, freight trains. Security measures were meant to accompany each stage.

6/ However, the completion date for the bridge's security facilities was repeatedly pushed back. In April 2022, the Ministry of Transport signed an agreement worth 617 million rubles for retrofitting the bridge with security measures.

7/ Part of the problem is that the volume of vehicle traffic across the bridge is such that intensive security checks would paralyse it. While 'level 3' security has been introduced on the railway bridge, in which every vehicle is checked, only level 2 applies to the road bridge.

8/ According to a Russian official, establishing 100% checks would require "total control of all vehicles." Only five to seven trucks could be checked per hour, which would grind traffic to a halt. "The bridge would be very safe, but nothing would go over it."

9/ Corruption, which is an omnipresent factor in Russian construction, is almost certainly also implicated. Vlasti accuses Alexei Vilorikovich Borisov, the Deputy General Director of the UVO of the Ministry of Transport, of holding up security measures through scams.

10/ According to a source quoted by Vlasti, "contracts for the construction of security checkpoints were embezzled in the following way". The scope of the work was overestimated in advance, then given to a road-building company with no experience in delivering the requirements.

11/ This company outsourced the work to specialists, who "get paid for the actual scope of work, which is slightly different, and some of them simply get dumped, unpaid. All the bills are then corrected according to the initial values, which are much higher than the actual ones."

12/ Although there are efforts to prevent violations and detect irregularities, the employees who try to do so "are fired, with one fatal accident occurring. Everything is hushed up at the highest level ... [by] police, prosecutors and even the FSB."

13/ The amount of the fraud is said to exceed 1.3 billion rubles ($21 million), with the stolen money being "dumped" into shell companies in order to be cashed out. As a result of the fraud, security work that had been paid for ended up being done late or not at all.

14/ It's impossible to say whether the bridge attack could have been prevented if the security systems were working. There's a human factor too – the bridge security guards who only gave the truck involved a brief inspection before allowing it to pass.

15/ As Vlasti points out, the UVO of the Ministry of Transport has a poor reputation as an employer. This is likely to be reflected in the quality of its employees' work and their willingness to accept bribes.

16/ It reports that employment review websites "contain a large number of complaints about the organisation's failure to comply with the Russian Federation Labour Code, the low salaries of employees, which need to be raised to 'above average', the lack of shift work, and so on."

17/ "Interestingly, the geography of the reviews does not include any specific region, but the whole country. The management of the departmental security services in Russia's southern regions is particularly hard hit."

18/ So it seems likely that the failure to detect the bomb that damaged the bridge wasn't just about technical failures or a lack of facilities, but a more general systemic failure of the Russian Ministry of Transport's ability to ensure security.

Sources:
🔹 rbc.ru/business/20/10…
🔹 rbc.ru/business/05/03…
🔹 vlasti.info/news/50569-pri…
🔹 vlasti.info/news/51534-za_…
🔹 vlasti.info/news/50413-dyr…