October 16, 2024:
The Russian military has always suffered from corruption though there was little of it during World War Two, at least noticeably. Russians call that conflict the Great Patriotic War. Currently Russians regard the invasion of Ukraine less favorably and the corruption is rampant. The government is cracking down on corruption but that only forced the corrupt activities to assume a lower profile and pretend that the crackdown was working.
Leader Vladimir Putin thought the Ukraine War would be over in days or weeks. It wasn’t and is now in its third year. Unlike World War II, the Russians invaded Ukraine and lost. Over half a million Russian soldiers are dead or incapacitated by wounds. The government pays families of dead soldiers tens of thousands of dollars. For families in rural areas, where most of the dead soldiers came from, this amount of cash is life changing. Soldiers who were badly wounded in Ukraine get lesser amounts but still enough to greatly improve their lives. Russia is spending 8 percent of the government budget on these payments and that has reduced the anger over dead or disabled soldiers to manageable levels. These billions, plus even more spent on continuing the war, have forced the government to go into debt.
The war also brought with it economic sanctions by NATO nations supporting Ukraine. This has crippled the economy and forced the government to take on still more debt. This will take Russia decades to deal with once the war is over. The war is not over, despite growing pressure from Putin’s business allies, the oligarchs. These executives see the war as bad for business and urge Putin to somehow, anyhow, stop the conflict.
Ukraine is willing to end the war, if they get back all the Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, that Russia has occupied since 2014. Putin is unwilling to do this even though his oligarch allies urge him to do so. Putin sees ending the war and returning stolen territories as proof that Putin’s War was all for nothing and cost Russia so much. Putin believes admitting defeat would end his quarter century in power. This would open Putin to prosecution. He cannot flee the country because foreign nations indicted him for war crimes three years ago.
The oligarchs and military commanders blame Putin for this defeat. While all this is going on, prosecutors are accusing more and more prominent Russians of corruption as opportunistic businessmen and generals steal billions and seek to find a safe exile where they can settle down and live luxuriously. Millions of military age Russian men have already fled the country to avoid military service and the high risk of death or disability in Ukraine.
Putin’s only response to this is dubious assurances that he can set things right. He can’t and chaos looms along with growing corruption and demands for a new government. While Putin won a 2023 election for another six years in power, he and many other Russians wonder if he or Russia will be able to survive another six years of misrule.