My big caveat for this one is that trying to get details on Corruption in Russia is always murky and difficult. Much of the whistleblowing that makes it into English is put out by opposition figures who are probably telling the truth in most cases, but it's hard to verify the stories. I've tried to rely on academic papers and Russian statements for this one, but just make sure you understand the limitations and difficulties being precise here. The second caveat is that there is a lot of corruption that falls into the categories I don't talk about. Legal but immoral manipulations of procurement processes at the top for example. There are also cases where profit may not even be the goal. Troops may strip down spare/stored vehicles for parts just to keep theirs running and avoid disciplinary action for example, the end result is the same. And yes, on the Pyotr Velikiy slide there is a typo on the amount seemingly stolen. And one final comment - because it seems to come through on all my videos. I often see comments that say that any critique I make of the Russian armed forces is propaganda because they're *insert claim about Russia winning the war here* and so the critique can't be true. I want to stress that Russia making gains and also suffering badly from economic, budgeting, or corruption issues is entirely possible. It's entirely possible to have a Russian force that poorly allocated its budget and suffered from corruption still achieve some goals. The reason I focus on corruption, or budgeting, or what not in a given video is because each video needs to stick to a topic, and can't be on the progress of the war in general. When I get to myth busting again, I will try and filter out some of the propaganda from both sides to assess performance to date as best I can, but for the moment, this video is on corruption. Thanks to todays sponsor, Ground News. Compare news coverage from diverse sources around the world on a transparent platform driven by data. ground.news/perun
@Perun Hey there! Great video as always, even tho I am not completely done yet. One point is bothering me a lot tho and I think I can give you insight on that. I was a career soldier in the german military and I know tons of people from other NATO militaries. This "petty theft and sloth" thing about the enlisted that would do "a thousand times more damage" is just a universal thing. I really don't think they operate differently from enlisted soldiers in NATO. I know no soldiers (NCO's and even Officers as well) who hasn't stolen from the army. Friend in the US Navy literally told me "if you need power tools for your home garage, you just order one from the Navy and say the old one is broken". The US Military just has so much money that it doesn't matter. Germany has big scandals about soldiers stealing ammunition and guns for quite some time now. I was part of the Franco-German Brigade and the french soldiers are the ones I have worked the most with. And damnit are those guys averse to doing their job (we were too, but they were all super chill about it on the upper levels as well). And they still were overall good soldiers. Being a soldier is a constant fight against the chain of command, because the enlisted eat shit in every army on this planet. Being lazy, or "the illusion of work" is a constant, because there are just two different stages for a soldier. Being bored or under mortal stress (quite literally at times). And from what I've read and heard about the russian conscripts at the beginning of the war, they were not operating differently from conscripts I've known in NATO (germany still had conscription until 2011). Professionalization is generally the better way nowadays and even then the enlisted will always fight for not getting bullshitted all the time, which is entirely justified. It's them who die first and do the most physical work.
I am a doctor from Russia and this video evokes so many memories and explains so many problems There is one more thing in the way corruption destroys institutions: honest and smart people who don't want to tolerate this corruption and understand that they can't do anything with it, leave these corrupt institutions and work somewhere else, so there is negative selection of people
You could have given an example of how every patient who shows up at a state-run clinic gets a bunch of stuff added to the list of provided services so the clinic can get more funding. Nurses are busy faking those records for at least half of their work time.
@@sciloj The US medical system is rife with that as well. They can't get away with services not rendered, but they sure as hell can tack on endless lists of services that _might_ be useful in the .00001% chance you have some rare disease. Or just claim that a $50 ambulance ride costs $300
Evokes? Revoke means to negate, renounce, withdraw permission from. Sorry for being that guy, I just don't want your excellent point being misinterpreted because of a word
As a low ranking US Army officer in Japan in 1966 I organized a recreational climb of Mt Fuji. I went to the supply Sargent and asked if he had any extra field jackets. "Extra!!, Suh, we don't use that word around heuh, if it's extra you stole it, if you don't have enough you sold it. We always have just enough. How many do you want?"
In the old Soviet system the joke used to be that “as long as they pretend to pay us, we’ll pretend to work” it appears that at least as far as the military is concerned, things haven’t changed.
I don't think I've met anyone who moved to Australia from Poland, Hungary, Romania, or any of the Warsaw Pact states before the fall of Communism that didn't either make that joke or empathise closely with it. It's funny until you think through just how damaging that state of thought is, and how it can paralyse an economy and society.
Ahem, the joke is a lot older than the USSR. All the problems described in the video have existed in the Russian military since before Ivan the Terrible got on the throne.
LOL Our version of this in the lands of former Yugoslavia goes "they can't pay me as little, as little I can work",... kind of loses the melody once translated.
Gulog In "The Gulag Archipelago", Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn tells the story of a train that leaves Moscow with enough leather to make 10,000 pairs of boots that are to be made by prisoners in the gulags of Far Eastern USSR. The leather travels along the Trans-Siberian Railway, the longest continuous rail line in the world. However, at each stop the cargo is inspected and the manifest is signed off attesting to leather to make 10,000 pairs of boots. But, each apparatchik must have his "beak" sweetened, so a bit of leather is "confiscated." By the time the train reaches the gulag, the manifest says 10,000, but there is only enough leather in the rail cars for 7,500 pairs of boots. The inmates make 7,500 pairs, but only 5,000 get loaded into the rail cars by the time the railroad people and the prison commandants get their "beaks sweetened." At each return stop, the cargo is inspected and the apparatchik's "beaks" are sweetened. When the train returns to Moscow, the manifest says that 10,000 pairs of boots are on board and accounted for. But only 2,500 pairs of boots are in the rail cars. Since no one wants to be blamed for stealing 7,500 pairs of boots, the manifest is stamped "All accounted for" as 2,500 pairs of boots are put into the warehouse. That is how you "lose" 1,500,000 military uniforms in Russia. хай живе Україна! Niech zyje Polska!
He was the best Russian traitor who sold BS to the wrst for lots of $$$. He made up things, which was never facts... but I see gullible people are OK with it...😂...
The ultimate example of "The Skim," that the Las Vegas mob was known for. In the movie Casino, it was comical. This stuff, is life threatening. A humanitarian nightmare to say the least. Im imagining: A Siberian prison needs shoes. Imagine, you gotta have 10,000 shoes. Ya gotta have them. You end up with 7,500.... smh
As someone who is currently serving in a lower unit supply position in the US Army but IS NOT a logistics soldier by trade (my unit needed one, I'm a helicopter mechanic but I got "voluntold") I can 100% confirm that HOLY FUCK the paperwork. I thought the paperwork that I had to do as a mechanic was annoying, but here I am doing command-level inventories (literally looking at everything...literally EVERYTHING down to screw driver bits) and I'm slowly but steadily losing my mind and now I know why our supply guys are so weird. But...I also have some really nice pens...so there's that.
You're doing God's work. Taking things down and opening things up and checking that everything is there and in good shape (batteries not leaking, etc.) is boring and time consuming. However, maintenance and inventory is why we have the military we have. Are things perfect? No, but our tires are not falling off our trucks. So keep doing what you're doing, knowing it's all important.
The same “inefficiency” of corruption/theft shows up in regular civilian life too… a thief recently stole about 6 feet of copper pipe from a friend’s restaurant, presumably to sell for scrap - maybe got $10 for it. But since the pipe came from the refrigerator, aside from the cost of the repair itself (about $1,000), all of the refrigerant leaked into the atmosphere (another $1,000, plus irreversible damage to the environment), and much of the food in the refrigerator was ruined and had to be replaced (another $2,500). So once all was said and done, the cost of the ‘corruption’ was probably over 400x the benefit to the thief. Super frustrating. And you can’t just hand the thief $20 and say “please don’t steal this pipe” because they’ll keep the twenty AND steal the pipe.
@@wow50000 Yeah; I guess I could have been less passive-aggressive and just asked him what the heck the connection between a copper thief hitting a restaurant and 'corruption' is.
It's funny, before the invasion of Ukraine, I remember seeing a lot of RU-vid videos reviewing Russian MRE's, and hearing about people buying them on ebay, and now this puts that in a whole 'nother context as far as how those MRE's got onto ebay in the first place, haha
I actually bought some of those 2015 MREs, because I wanted to get a glimpse of the state of Russian logistics. They were pretty good, except for the crackers which were rancid. Nice.
Same reason why American firearm RU-vidrs seem to be easily able to get all sorts of current Russian combat gear, they're getting it from crooked elements of the Russian military. With American military gear most of what you see in the hands of civilians is surplus gear that gets sold at government auction. In the case with American MREs the manufacturers actually just make extra to sell on the open market as they're popular as backpacking/survival food with civilians. With the US military most of the suspected corruption is at the procurement level, especially politically motivated contracts going to specific congressional districts and especially procuring additional equipment well above what the military needs or even wants.
Corruption is like the meth head in my home town that tried to steal $20 worth of copper from an electrical station. He unalived, we lost power and about a million in damage from cascading failures
@@RaDeus87 arch and the the siege of Vraks killed me and i stopped watching after that hahahahahhaa far far far to long XD but he does put the effort in
I don't have a military background, so it was great to read your comment. Like you, I've found Perun's posts to be enthralling and for me, highly informative, but it's hard for me to be sure of what information I can trust. So to see someone with US military experience confirm the value of this presentation was great. (The amount of work this guy puts into every one of his videos is really impressive?) Thanks Frederick.
@@holon4662 Thanks for you reply Holon ... that's good to know because although I find Perun's analyses impressive, it's so hard to be sure of anything these days. Boy, he works so hard and seems to have the rare ability to see right to the core of a matter and he presents in a very precise and analytical manner. Perun is Australian and I am too ... I can see that besides his give-away Aussie accent, his approach is very Australian male ... matter of fact, no frills and no bullshit! Thanks again for making the time to reply, much appreciated.
“For want of a nail, the shoe was lost For want of a shoe, the horse was lost For want of a horse, the rider was lost For want of a rider, the battle was lost For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost All for the want of a nail.”
@@gkagara The original Russia goal was to take over Ukraine and install a pro-Russian government. They failed. They also alienated themselves from the world community, destroyed their economy, made sure that Finland and Sweden joined NATO, galvanized the Western world against them, flightened their neighbours to the point where all of the anit-Russian neighbours are buying Western weapons at historic levels. Which means that Russia has few people to sell their weapons (which have largely underperformed). Anyone calling this a win for Russia is a moron. You seem to be first in line.
I had student internship in USA Defense Logistic Agency (DLA) years ago. At the time I thought it was boring, auditing the procurement process. I didn’t appreciate the importance. Seeing a video like this would have provided perspective.
@T.J. Kong As a retired aerospace Digital Design engineer I can corroborate that last point. I can also say that at my level I never saw ANY corruption. Engineers, at least back then, were pretty honest, to a fault actually, at least the ones I knew.
@@MrJdsenior Recently retired Army civilian, working a different side of the house. What would drive everyone crazy was all the time spent on "mandatory training," all of which seemed nothing more than a CYA effort by the lawyers. If some soldiers get in trouble for misusing government travel cards or something else like that, the legal staff can point to all this mandatory training and say "we're not at fault." Such an enormous waste of government time and resources every year, involving every member of the military. If these folks had been in charge during WW2, the Army would still be in England, finishing up their mandatory training, before being allowed to land in France.
@@josephryan9230 Private industry is the same! $5 million per year investment banker committed fraud? Make all the tellers take ethics courses! It's also a PR effort: See, we're serious about fighting fraud! Now don't look top closely at the accounts of the next guy who brings in $100 million in profit for the company this year.
In an ocean of click bait, hot-take, talking-head, three-minute reporting, these long-form presentation videos have been an outstanding counterpoint. Detailed, deep, and engaging. These are some of the best put together briefings I've encountered in two decades working for the US military industrial complex. I'm not at all surprised you've found an audience, well done.
I haven't watched this yet, but, I find myself frustrated ALL THE TIME rummaging around for content. I hope your right. Your endorsement struck me straight away. Thanx.
My experience in The US Army. There was a small amount of "shrinkage" allowed in every supply transaction- that was where theft or diversion opportunities existed. Usually not theft for profit, often getting some extra gear to a friends unit or trading with another unit to make up a shortage in your own.
Of course no army will 100% eliminate graft and theft, but if it’s not a cultural thing, and as you say to make up for mistakes in the supply chain and maybe secure some extras, the army can withstand that. If it’s endemic to every level no army can survive that.
Yeah, thick wool socks, sport socks, fleece beanie hats, zip ties, duct tape, Para cord, fleece jackets, MOLLE pouches and pens and markers of all kind are mysteriously always missing or lost. 🤨 Oh, and those damn zip lock bags.😂
This is all the reason why I have a personal dislike for corruption, it's not the monetary value it's the rot that gets into the foundations. But General Oligarchov and Private Conscriptiveitch were hilarious.
Yeah same. I think the one absolute essential any nation needs to get right is corruption avoidance. Doesn't matter if you have the resources, land, manpower, insituitions or ideals. If your corrupt it kills all the benefits those might bring. Corruption easily gradually enters a system. And is almost impossible to dislodge.
There's a prominent retired Finnish Intelligence Colonel named Martti J. Kari, who's been putting in a lot of work lecturing and talking about the war in Ukraine and specifically his experience about the Soviet Union and Russia. He talks about corruption A LOT, about how it's institutional in the Russian system, and how it's basically a licence to steal. But the key thing is you are not allowed to steal more than a certain amount, and finding out where that sweet spot is can be tricky business. If you steal too much for example, it'll be too obvious and you might lose your position or take something that belongs to someone else higher up (that they are entitled to steal themselves). He also talks about how the position is not yours, but that you're just occupying it. And if you do something wrong, it can be taken away. So corruption in the Russian leadership is a blessing and a curse because if they have to get rid of you, you can just be accused of corruption and stealing government funds etc. The evidence against you will be overwhelming because duh you HAVE been stealing to line your own pockets just like everyone else in the top positions. Then they'll give your spot to a new guy, who will live a cushy life lining his pockets in that same position. Maintenance budgets get stolen, the military commanders report that they've carried out the maintenance, the higher-ups know it's not true but that the military commander is "allowed" to steal a certain amount, and round and round we go. So we have military leaders who've lined their own pockets throughout the years being "caught" because the one time the army's needed to fight a proper shooting war, they're completely humiliated when everything falls apart in broad daylight in front of the international media. Edit: I was watching the video while writing this, and now that I finished it, it occurs to me you said the exact damn things I just wrote Kari talking about in his lectures. Fancy that!
@@worldoftancraft You misunderstand, it’s not the same. In western democracy you are elected into a position, or assigned to it. Then in order to be removed, you must commit a crime and there must be lengthy investigations to make sure you are guilty. Usually at least. Its a very rare thing that someone in Finland for example can ”just be fired”. In Russian autocracy the strong leader leads from the top, and people are swapped around when he decides. If there is no law for the swap, one will be made. Colonel Kari talks about ”rule OF law” and ”rule BY law” society. In ”rule by law” the government and leadership make the laws they need, so everything they do is automatically ”legal”. In rule of law, the law restricts even the leader, and making new laws is a complex system with multiple different bodies controlling a part of it, including people who oppose you. How big and powerful is the opposition in Russian politics? So in the corrupt system, you can lose everything in a day. Even the stuff you DON’T have from corruption, the honest stuff. And because everyone is corrupt, you cannot fight against being fired because it’s legal to instantly remove you because you were exposed as ”corrupt” (like I said, easily huge evidence because you are ALL dirty). So in that way the position is not yours, you are just occupying it as long as the leader wants.
@@Karathos I understand, but you could avoid this by using the words, that are not leading to the trap you speaking counter yourself. I don't know, perhaps you have to take a look into the domestic parlament in which even True To The Spirit of the Rulling Party things, from time to time, are being denyed? Like the updated to the conscription law? Also define the opposition. Because what I learned is that the true opposition in Russia are the fans of doing a rimjob everymorning for every citizen of the white world, primarily the US-of-A. Because we, as nation of soobhoomans, simply have to respect them - they have institutions. Of course it's not true, I speak exaggerately but that are the main ideas of Russia's liberals who are the mainstream of the opposition. «So in the corrupt system, you can lose everything in a day. Even the stuff you DON’T have from corruption, the honest stuff» I thought you can loose everything everewhere, and everywhere corruption is being punished much more than solely the benefits it gave to you. «So in that way the position is not yours, you are just occupying it as long as the leader wants.» Excuse me once again, yet in civilized countries there is no such thing as TERMS? You just being elected and capture the chair forever, endlesly, the seat is «YOURS»? Please, discontinue to use the misleading words - improve the rhetoric.
I am from Russian Siberia and I must tell that you are really good to depict some of the topics about Russia/Ukraine war. I can see that you can understand Russian and you actually can search and investigate the sources in that language. Furthermore, you actually understand what is actually written there, with all the sarcastic points in there. Very accurate depiction in general. I suspect you are Russian/Ukrainian/Belorussian yourself. To understand Russian specifics of corruption one can read "Revizor" by M.Gogol. Another very good thing for reading is Patrick Gordon's diary, fascinating. Interesting fact Russian Federation do not have a single weapon that was fully developed and introduced into serial production. 100% of all items are modernized versions of something which was designed in 1970s, 1980s in the Soviet Union.
Well they must look at their own corruption in Pentagon and they also must look after their veterans suicide before talking about Russia. BTW 5 month later and with all this BS your spreading, the Russians are winning this American proxy, started by Obama Biden Neland McCain Graham ect ect...traitor 😮
@@monaliza3334 Oh, a traveler from a parallel universe where Russia is winning, tell me, who killed Lincoln where you are from? Who won the 1948 US presidential election? Who is the prime minister of the UK? Who is the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party?
This is what happens when a country has no checks and balances. Literally why democracy is so slow in some countries. Not for corruption but because of the amount of sociopaths trying to be corrupt and the system just trying to weed them out.
Corruption has nothing to do with democracy. USA is “the most democratic country in the entire world”, yet its corrupted to the core. We could see it in Afghanistan where the entire point of the campaign was just stealing money from the American budget. Anybody who actually tried to win the war was getting shafted.
I think this is why facists and dictators are seen as powerful. They are able to snowball their military power fast at the start. Only after a couple of years the gaps become visible and it becomes clear that they skipped the fundamentals of building a functioning state. Fast is unsteady and unsteady is slow.
I left my native Croatia because it was becoming impossible to survive on any level because of corruption. Croatia is considered one of the three most corrupted countries in the EU. It is not only the military that corrodes as a consequence of corruption. It is all-pervading. All facets of society get affected. And it eats into the flesh of the nation, the opportunities get lost, the advancement is stopped, the standard of living erodes, and what is the most mind-boggling, the opportunities for stealing diminish. :)
the plot twist: the horrible K.vid. at once it became easier in a corrupt country to dodge the lethal injection! e.g. my Ukraine has the lowest clot-shot rate in Europe
@@joaocosta3374I'm done fighting for that country. I fought in a four year war to liberate it from Serbian invasion in the nineties, and even than it was been taken over by this mafia style political party that sucks the life out of it. Now I want to spend my old days in relative peace and prosperityof a wealthier country.
When I was in the Air Force, and I sure this applies to the other U.S. armed services, you could only stay in position for so long. Eventually you got sent to another base. This was to keep you from building your own little fiefdom. Civilian employees could stay in one place, but a new commanding officer every few years is probably hard on their off-the-books enterprises, if any.
PCSing SMs is one way to prevent fiefdoms, but its also twofold. The fact that there are favorable locations to PCS to creates motivation look forward to the next assignment.
@@kempana9414 hmm what if you are just moving between two places, essentially building a fiefdom over two separate areas. I know quite a few units where commander and deputy commander just swap seats between deployments.
I work in a very large state-run institution in the U.S. and fiefdoms are entirely in force. It cuts both ways, but often for the bad, unfortunately. Often I recommend to people that when they have an issue that they go in person and expect to have at least two redirections and to spend two to three hours, e.g.: "we don't do that, these people do", "oh you need this other form", "who told you that, no, now you go to this building", etc. Since there is no incentive structure around service, everyone naturally tries to shape their job so they can leave as early as possible and do as little as possible. I can't fault people for being human, but it is quite unfortunate for all involved. It can be good because when someone competent and capable is moved in at the top, the culture in that area quickly changes. It is however very sad to watch people erode over time when constantly running in to laziness, bureaucratic rote, radically different processes and practices across domains and the incredible protection of state jobs in the U.S. . I've been in this institution for about 20 years and I've seen only two good people stay good, or stay, for longer than five years. The recent virus epidemic also exposed more issues than I had been aware of before (much as warfare demonstrating weakness in a military), so I'm on my way out as well.
And then five years after ‘Fortress’ was supposed to roll out to the conscripts, the US army announces ‘Stark’. It does everything ‘Fortress’ was supposed to do better and costs about $30,000 a unit. The procurement process is a mess and everyone says that’s proof ‘Fortress’ is better. But at the end of it, fresh enlisted are trained on it as soon as they’re put into infantry as their specialty, existing servicemen and women are undergoing conversion training, and the special forces units who first got it are practicing at least 4 hours a day with ‘Stark Mk. II’ while ‘Fortress’ is still only in the hands of a few infantry regiments who do more parading in Moscow than actual fighting. Some loud morons still insist the Russian kit is better.
the problem is.....Russian equipment can be legitimately good.....but every thing goes wrong at every turn causing the russians to use old crappy stuff, in a completely outdated manner and have nothing to show for it. If fortress would have been properly distributed in that example without any of the corruption, then it would have made the russian infantry a much more capable force. In other words, if Russia was not a corruption-addict, it's military would have been a genuine near-peer opponent of Nato. But we can all thank the sheer incompetence and corruption to ensure that this is not a reality nor is it likely to become one in the future.
I’m a US DoD Civil Servant. IF I was living beyond my means, multimillion dollar homes whatever my butt would be sitting in security’s office on my next clearance review. More than likely before since if my colleagues noticed something they would immediately be in contact with security. If I saw something I would make the call. We take our jobs and our oaths of office dead serious. The War Fighter’s life is in our hands.
Actually Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames lived above their paygrade and did so for long time. Culture of secrecy may be really bad thing when it has actually been breached.
Your last sentence says a lot about the culture you work in. It's not just that there are systems in place that would likely detect corruption and punish you accordingly, but more importantly you know the damage that corruption does and find the idea of stealing from fighting men and women to be morally repugnant.
@@trolleriffic exactly 💯👏 There's a strong sense of duty and a culture of responsibility on which you CANNOT put a price. That's more valuable than a whole fleet of carriers.
That’s because you are a line serf. If you think your honor is indicative of how the American system works, I have a nice bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
I am now retired, but during much of my career in the air force there was a 'fraud, waste, and abuse' program, where anyone (military or civilian) seeing anything suspicious, could report it without going through chain of command. If the report was found to have merit, the person making it received a very nice cash reward.
@@ricardokowalski1579 I cant recall which country, but I do recall a similar initative causing a hillarious situation where a police officer was offered a nice big mercedes(the driver of it was rich and caught speeding)and THEN 40.000 dollars on top, and then a friggin apartment worth 100k USD... officer just kept going "no." at the increasingly grand bribe offers.... Turns out the government matched the bribe by default preemptively to squash corruption!
Here's a pretty !fun! one: Foreign tourists come to a military base and have a blast, firing Kalashnikovs, mortars, even artillery and ant-tank weapons if they can afford it. They also take some souvenirs and pay generously to the base commander. After they're gone, he writes there were military exercises using the ammo the guests used. A win-win.
One of the best insights in this is that low-level but pervasive and frequent mismanagement, graft, theft and neglect can have hugely asymetric effects on how entire units perform on the battlefield. The $25 million mobile rocket launcher system cannot be moved around because the tires burst or because it's stuck in mud. The tanks run out of fuel because a bunch of guys had sold off diesel shipments and fuel runs low for hundreds of machines. Or the supposedly well-trained infantry unit is missing flak jackets, proper helmets or night vision goggles - and the guys will get shot and killed rather easily. And other examples. It reminds me of a commentary long time ago, in the late 80s, early 90s, of how the Soviet system of economy was capable of producing sophisticated aircraft but couldn't deliver a normal potato harvest.
One story of corrpution: Estonia got a few billion euros from the EU to expand and extend their infrastructure, particulalry the highway from Tallinn to Narva, a town bordering Russia near Saint Petersburg, and Russia got an equal amount from EU to build and repair the highway from Narva (Russian side) to Saint Petersburg. Nothing ever happened with the Russian highway while the Estonian was entirely built.
There's an old Russian joke: Russian politician visits the US, the welcoming committee throws a huge party - vodka, cocaine, gorgerous men and women, all that jazz and the russian dude asks the american: - So, this must be expensive. Where's the money from? American gestures out the window: - See that bridge? Two billions budget, one billion actual work, and we're spending the change right now. Next year, american politician visits russia. The party is even grander, fucking rivers of vodka, mountains of cocaine, and hookers? Who needs hookers when you have Hollywood stars? So, the american dude now asks: - Holy fuck, where's the money from? Russian gestures out the window: - See that bridge? - What bridge? - Well, that's your answer right here.
@@RedaniaKnight-Elect Estonia is 13th least corrupt out of 180 countries on Transparency International's Corruption Index. It's less corrupt than most of Europe in general.
@@Arperture The topics about corruption are very quickly shut down in Estonia. The country's government directly benefits from hiding it, as that ensures their free EU money pour in. Otherwise a lot of things just do not make sense in that funny little country. Like why the solar batteries are as wide spread in a country that sees consistent sun maybe like a month in a year a best. Don't be naive. It's a shithole of a country pretending to be more successful than other post USSR countries.
Just come across this, brilliant work. I am ex Royal Navy and the pay was good and the need to take things on permanent loan, so to speak, was never an issue. Good pay and especially a good pension, were far too much to loose so it practically never happened. In 14yrs only once did I witness something like this. A senior rating of over 25yrs standing got caught stealing something quite worthless, he was drummed out the Navy and lost his full pension. Can't get a bigger deterrant than that.
In 30 yrs in the Forces I saw loads of low level "trading " go on. Buckshee's were plentiful, everybody had buckshee kit it was used to trade for a piece of kit you may have been "Diffy". It's part of the big game. MOD Procurement is a joke not for nothing does Murphy's 1st Law of Combat state " Remember : your weapon was made by the lowest bidder !"
What a fantastically insightful video. Corruption is exactly why my family fled the Soviet Union. Grandpa was a prosecutor and did his work normally for years until it came time to persecute a DUI case that killed an entire family of 4 in a different car. The drunk driver was somebody’s relative so pressure came form above to drop the case. Grandpa had to resign. That was the family story that inspired mom to get me and my sister the hell out of there before I end up as Private Conscriptovich.
This is THE topic. I worked much of my private life in procurement and I’ll tell you that corruption can start so small that it wouldn’t even be considered extralegal. And once you’re in for the penny, you’ll probably be in fir the pound. Personnel rotation is an important key to prevention and uncovering corruption.
Materiel rotation also helps a lot at the lower levels. When you have to sign that the vehicle you got was undammaged and in perfect order, you are unlikly to not take care if you know that one day you will need to give it to another bloke and you know that if he doesn't sign the paper off, you will have some explaining to do. Altough this sometimes gets down to the rediculous details, the result is that the stuff you receive is in good order. I remember once having to pay 0,11 euro because i lost one off the things you use to tie down your tent to the ground (sorry forgot the correct english word) Altough sometimes it realy goes to far. I remember that i needed a note from my local commander why i used a fire extinguisher that had a serial number on it made by the same firefighters on a fire,.. to avoid having to pay for it.
At the time I am writing This, this video is 9 months old. In those 9 months I have shared it with many people. 100% have found it informative and enlightening. Thank you so much for producing this extreamely useful presentation. This presentation will be used as an information tool as long as there are armies or corporations. This along with your other fine presentations are now part of history. The history of the Ukranian war for sure.
Dude, your videos are pure gold... the level oof knowledge and dedication you pour in to these is near mindboggling.. These video esseys are so revealing, truthfull, honest, well researched .. and even entertaining.. you manage to explain and present such complex things with such ease and clarity, that i'm not really sure many people even grasp it,.. grasp just how good you are at this, how well done these are... just pure gold.. 10 out of 10 dude.. amazing stuff... PLEASE keep up this good, amazing work !
Great video! You should have also mentioned the “dead souls” problem in the russian army. Its when a unit commander reports full number of personnel while having 60% in reality and then pocketing the rests’ salaries.
Dead Souls...the black comedy written by Nikolai Gogol about a petty noble who bought dead serfs so their former owners could pay less "soul tax", a tax levied per serf. The noble then sold their indentures (?) at a profit.
"Paper soldiers" are a problem that has existed for literally millennia, but most modern armies have measures that do not allow for it to any appreciable degree. In many ways, including this one, Russia does not have a modern army.
During the imjon wars, the Korean garrison commanders would frequently inflate the numbers they had under their command. When the Japanese invaded, the rulers realised they had far less of a military than they thought.
In my third world country (in central Africa), this is a national sport. Everytime there is a public construction project, the dead souls account in average for 50% of the registered workers. We had a minister that, for 10 years, diverted 2000 dead souls monthly salaries. He introduced these fictional identities in the database of the government payroll, dispatching them in many different ministries. As we say "The fish rots from the head"
Something which came to mind when you said the cost of corruption was "more than just that 20% figure" is that percentages compound - if 20% is lost to corruption at every level of a 5 level system, then by the end you have nearly 70% lost to corruption.
Having worked in U.S. Navy logistics i can tell you we have less greedy but still corrupt leaders who handle contracts. Influence and pull as well as revolving door in the military industrial complex is prevelant in the West as well.
Haven't had a chance to read all of the comments, so forgive me if someone else has pointed this out. Russia's "corruption wounds" are largely self inflicted. If Putin had not shut down independant news papers and tv stations, he might have learned sooner just how bad things are in his army. A free press is crucial in reducing corruption.
true, but there are other factors as well. For example low pay at the bottom ranks.... if your being forced to try to survive on 30 dollars a month you are practically being forced to find some way to make more. So better pay, perhaps add some independent oversight and for shits and giggles make the punishments for corruption extremely severe. Im thinking corporal punishments and hard labor for the smallest infraction, right up to execution for the highest (in my view high level corruption should be viewed as effectively potentially murdering the people effected)
It's so funny how Putin thought Europe and the West were gay, weak and stupid. He honestly thought his system would work better when he himself and his cronies steal and abuse everything from money to material to soldiers. Now he is being shown how weak freedom is. 🤣
Aside from corruption, but relating closely, an old cold-war proverb for up-and coming countries thinking of threatening The West; Q: "What is the worst thing that can happen when you display a *game changing* (but not quite yet fully completed or fielded) weapon's system to your adversaries?" A: "They believe you." (and of course, spend real money making a much better one and actually fielding it against you)
Reminds me of the MiG-25 and the influence it had on the F-15 in a way. The MiG-25 Foxbat was an absolute speed demon and not much else, but the USAF and USN thought it must have been some superfighter with Mach 3+ performance and the ability to turn on a dime due to the large wings, and the Soviets let them think that. Turns out, the large wings were there simply to get the plane off the ground since much of the airframe was steel, as they discovered when Victor Belenko defected flying one. By then, the USN and USAF was already well on their way to designing a counter to what they thought was the MiG-25 and figured that since they're already halfway there to making a superfighter, they might as well just make one, resulting in the F-14 and F-15. Which went on to absolutely trash all the MiGs out there with extreme prejudice.
@@classifiedad1 Yes, well spotted! That was the well-known example which applied to, and probably inspired the proverb. That, and anything else that was designed to counter the B-70 are great examples.
@@classifiedad1 Minor correction; The MiG-25 wasn't made out of a nickel steel alloy with the leading edge parts made titanium. Analysts in the west thought that like the SR-71, the main airframe was made out of titanium. After all, the Soviet Union was by far the biggest producer of titanium in the world and the titanium used to build the SR-71 was bought from the Soviet Union trough dummy corporations. Also, while the design of the F-15 definitely came out of the misconceptions about the MiG-25, the F-14 traces its history to the F-111B (basically the navy going "Lets start over and do it properly this time") that was begun well before the U.S became aware of the MiG-25.
@@LAG09 The MiG-25 airframe was largely nickel steel with titanium leading edges, mainly on the basis of cost. Working with titanium is expensive because it's an absolute bitch to work with, especially when trying to mill or weld it. My point was that Western analysts assumed as you pointed out correctly, that much of the aircraft was made of titanium and thus assumed it was a hyper-agile dogfighter with Mach 3 performance and long range. I should have added that, but oh well. As for the influence of the MiG-25 on F-14 and F-15 design, the aircraft is cited in several documents regarding design decisions when having to explain to reformers led by none other than Sprey and Boyd why an F-5 with a GAU-8 isn't what they're looking for. Happily, the reformers were heckled out of the room.
@@classifiedad1 The reason for why the MiG-25 wasn't made out of titanium are well known. I'm not disagreeing but expanding on what you said so no need to get defensive. However while the false assumptions on the MiG-25 influenced the specifications for the F-15, this is not true of the F-14. Its origins are in the failure of the F-111B and was a clean sheet re-design meant to rectify the failures of the aforementioned plane. The fat that it has a lot of similarities with the F-15 is mostly incidental. There are also some major differences like how the F-15 needs a massive 2.3 km runway while the F-14 only needs 730 m without a catapult. For comparison the F-16 and JAS-39 only need about 500 m.
On the note of supply officers and paperwork. I have a friend who was a quartermaster, I once listened to him complain about paperwork during a period of re-arsenal for 3 hours during a hike. His description and invectives on the nature of paperwork were both descriptive and inventive.
I worked with dozens of Russian immigrants to the US in the field of engineering in private industry. The lower level guys were reliable and hard working. The upper level guys did the absolute minimum of work and screwed up frequently. One engineer consultant I worked with could never understand why I wouldn't accept a kickback of any type for sending work his way.
@@principetnomusic you basically executed the old corrupt ruling class and the ones who replaced them behaved in the same way. That's why peaceful, slow revolutions are far better than quick and bloody ones.
@@principetnomusic LOL. And the people who "won" the revolution simply outlawed other parties, and made themselves the new elite. Russia has never stopped selecting gangsters and criminals to run things, and it never will. There is a reason that despite having more natural resources overall, than any other nation on the planet, Russia is a borderline 3rd world shit hole. The rot that permeates Russia is Russian culture.
This video is a CGSC level of instruction: very effective in presenting a complicated topic. For what it's worth: Command and General Staff College is the school providing the US Army professional education for Graduate and post-Graduate studies, and your presentation would definitely not be out of place there! I don't have any guidance for you about future topics other than keep doing what you're doing. You have an ability to explain a "system of systems" type topic in an understandable way, it ends up being a lot more informative than I could have ever expected. Thanks so much for posting such amazing videos!
I’d like to point out that CGSC (and Naval War College) makes videos of public talks available on RU-vid. Certainly not as in depth as a graduate level course or seminar, but they can be quite insightful to a lay audience.
This reminds me of a few things I experienced in the US Army. A sergeant in operations refused (it was a soft refusal, he just kept saying he didn't have time) to do my paperwork until I fixed his personal laptop. Every time I came in to ask him about it he'd say "Sorry but we've been very busy. Can you fix my laptop?" It was about two weeks before I understood what was going on. I fixed his laptop (would have cost a hundred bucks at Best Buy) and my paperwork got fixed. A unit I was in found something like $40 million worth of supplies and equipment unaccounted for. That is, it was just gone: no paperwork for it, and it wasn't in the warehouse. The warrant officer in charge of supply was relieved for cause, or whatever it is they do to warrants, and we all had to bring every scrap of military equipment we had to a parking lot so it could all get sorted. I don't think this was corruption because any idiot who managed to finish supply school knows how to fill out paperwork. And, finally, when I was in Iraq a civilian approached me and offered to buy a piece of diagnostic equipment (it was a really fancy multimeter) and got kind of peeved when I refused. Apparently the fact that I wasn't willing to "sell" him something that's the property of the US Army was annoying.
Do you think that $40 million worth of equipment is “lost”, perhaps tucked away in another warehouse where it was mistakenly sent, buried, and forgotten about because the officer in charge didn’t want to deal with the paper?
@@MarcosElMalo2 Ahh, no? I think that the command of the entire unit enabled a culture of sloppiness and a lackadaisical (sp?) attitude toward professionalism. The stuff wasn't stolen, or at least the majority of it wasn't. Probably most of it was issued just like it was supposed to be, but the supply sgt. was like "Eh, you can sign for it later" and then forgot about it. I'm sure some of it was lost to fraud, waste, and abuse but it wasn't a unit full of corrupt people. It was a unit full of sloppy, lazy people who refused to do their jobs unless cornered and carefully supervised. And because command all the way up was the same way, nobody was supervising anyone.
@@Oberon4278 Thanks for the clarification! My thought was due to an experience with an employer who went ballistic when some rarely used but valuable equipment went missing. He really went nuts, until he remembered where he put it (during a move 15 years previously, he had put the instruments into some bankers boxes, which accidentally went into offsite records storage, where nobody thought to look when we tore apart every other possible place we could look).
@@MarcosElMalo2 Oh damn, I've done similar things but never with anything valuable. (Except that one time I did it with my body armor, and the place I finally found it was on my body.)
@@Oberon4278 Hahaha. Yeah, I keep wishing for Bluetooth eyeglass frames (that aren’t monstrosities) so I can locate my eyeglasses . . . on my head. I finally got a pair of frames that break at the bridge, and I misplace them less frequently.
This channel feels like that awesome class you took in college from that awesome professor that you never missed a lecture because it was just so damn interesting and relevant to current affairs.
I see this talk about cultural corrosion and I think of this other youtube channel where a guy talks about his experiences as a gunsmith/armorer in the US Army and how he openly loathed a lot of his job and felt his best efforts were nullified by the incompetence or uncaring nature of his fellow soldiers and superiors--but even as poster boy for Low Morale Soldier, he still tried to do his job right and made sure he could do it efficiently. Huge difference, I think.
The guy in question is Mike's friend Zach Hazard. He also reported a couple of interesting things that happened, such as an acting first sergeant who did fuck tons of steroids and was busted for some kind of embezzlement scheme that they humorously compared to "smuggling out first sergeant insignias"
Not familiar with the channel, but the song is eerily familiar. I lost my job as company armorer in '02 when I forced the XO to be physically present for the weekly command checks. He'd never had to do that before. He gave the job to his roommate, another E5 (illegal, but he did it anyway). 8 months later the new armorer got busted with hundreds of pieces of small arms parts in envelopes in his trunk - marked for shipping, even. He was selling the M4 parts on Gunbroker and paying the XO by letting him fuck his girlfriend (not even kidding). They both went to the stockade and got dishonorables.
I can’t believe you were a gaming channel. You deliver Army War College level of scholarship. Your grasp of the subject matter is master level. I appreciate your work.
Hobbies versus work. As others have likely said, Perun probably has given similar presentations as part of work and been completely ignored. It just turns out that we all are actually interested in military procurement and logistics.
There were those stories out of Belarus via Ukraine, days before the invasion, that the grunts were selling “unused” military fuel they had at the end of their exercises to the locals for booze before they went home, so yeah when everyone’s on the make control becomes impossible. 10 days later there’s a 40 mile traffic jam on the Kyiv road…
I come from an ex-communist country and what people don't seem to understand is that corruption lives in every man, from the peasant to the elite. Every person makes their own choices of course, but from a cultural perspective, it's not just the ruling class that is corrupt.
@@allydea True, but the peasant is most certainly taking cues from the elite ruling them, "why should I be honest when the president is a thief?" is hard to argue against.
@@allydea I once had an Eastern European girlfriend in the early 90's. I visited her family and was made very welcome. Her dad told me a (won't mention the nationality) is only happy if they know they have cheated you.
@@Haan22 Another way to look at it is that the peasant has an example of behavior, one that he recognizes is destructive to the community that he is part of and yet he engages in that same type of behavior himself. It's a choice.
@@allydea I am not from an ex-communist country, but its really the same all over. As a manager I’ve convinced many a “Švejk” to be proud in his work & actively stopped half the organisation robbing the other half blind. But one bad boss easily ruins all your efforts.
This is a case from a western military. I happened to work in a position, where we had, say, some radio equipment and used to record some stuff we heard on that radio equipment on tape recorders. The interesting thing was, that the brand, that made those radios had officially (and very publically, as it used to be a very big brand, once upon a time) been economically bancrupt for 10 years by the time of my service, but somehow still had a contract to supply spare parts for those radios. And those tape recorders we used. Well, I could go and get a far more capable device for €500 at the next electro shop. But ours were delivered in NATO olive, so, off course, they had a procurement price of €20.000 each.
During WWII, my mom's family moved out to California for war work. My aunt was movie-star gorgeous, and when she wasn't working at a war plant, she was dating the many soldiers and sailors clogging this west coast city. A Navy quartermaster sergeant fell under her spell, and would regularly bring her, and my mom's family, large quantities of meat, eggs, and butter, which he claimed he was supposed to destroy because they had reached their expiration date, and he hated to see good food go to waste. Meat, eggs, and butter were rationed for civilians. It may indeed have been the case that the food was expired, but I suspect that when he wasn't trying to impress women, he probably sold all that "expired food" on the black market. My mom would often speculate on how much this quartermaster had been able to line his pockets with his access to all that meat and butter.
@@Kaiserboo1871 Indeed, the military had already written off these perishables as of no use to the troops they were meant to feed. And coming right after the Great Depression, when there was real hunger in the USA, and when there was tremendous controversy when good food was destroyed to keep prices up for the farmers (milk was dumped, oranges were set on fire, and baby pigs were slaughtered), I'm sure that the quartermaster was almost expected by his superiors to redistribute the expired food.
@@clairenollet2389 I think you are on to something. I bet his superiors wanted him to sell it because the government couldn’t (coming out of the New Deal, you had all kinds of new health laws, I’m willing to bet that there was a law on the books that made it illegal for the government to sell expired product). So it was much more convenient (and to an extent ethical) for the government to turn a blind eye to this little bit of corruption.
One thing about the Russian mentality that drove my friends father nuts was trying to get them to do any maintenance (as a foreigner trying to set up a factory in Russia). Didn't matter if he tried to incentivise them monetarily, maintenance just didn't happen and everything broke down constantly. This was fairly long ago and his own hypothesis was that people there were still so used to the soviet culture where you didn't really know if you ended up in gulag tomorrow that you essentially just lived for the moment and didn't invest in your own future.
Even though people did and still have that kind of sense of "no clear future", an absolute disregard for maintenance and procedures is a bit more complex than that. It also stems from the eroded sense of ownership. The Soviet government was constantly saying things like "it's all people's property". In fact, it meant "it's nobody's responsibility". This trait is well-analyzed by Joseph Schumpeter in his studies of bureaucratism destroying both corporate and communist economies. Basically, any situation where people are told what to do all the time can only be sustainable when multiple conditions are met: what they are told to do is meaningful (following such instruction actually leads to a desirable outcome), there's a strict discipline of following those instructions, there are predictable and fair (proportional) consequences for not following it or deviating from that, there's a mechanism that allows meaningful bottom-to-top feedback. Personal individualistic responsibility (together with a certain power to make own decisions) can, to a large degree, replace these conditions, but it can't happen if acting responsibly on your own is punishable. That's where both Soviet and Russian societies fail terribly because being responsible is often seen as a bad feature (a great example would be the insulting expression "тебе что, больше всех надо?" that means roughly "why you care more than others?"). The same applies to discipline that is impossible to maintain because a lot of things simply don't make any sense to people and they are either punished disproportionately for petty mistakes or not punished at all for not doing anything. The latter issue is even ingrained in the Criminal Code - there is a punishment for government officials who tried to do something and did it wrong, but there's no such punishment for the inaction that leads to even greater damage.
It might go further back than that. Tolstoi wrote in Anna Karenina about how hard it was to get the laborers to do anything on a farm. Russia had serfdom for a long time.
@@fagerdam it's a fashionable thing - to blame slavery or serfdom for various issues, but there's no way to prove that such features can persist through so many generations. We empirically know that such environment does have an effect on people down the line, but more recent conditions likely have a greater influence. I saw how at the end of the eighties a lot of people were happy to be able to start their tiny businesses and so on. However, the traumatic experience of the early nineties convinced many of them that it's a "safer and easier" option to go back to authoritarian system and give up as many responsibilities as they can.
@@sciloj exactly the same thing happened in China during the Great Leap Forward when everything was forcibly collectivised. And I mean literally everything, not just land, but accomodation, and the most basic possessions. Frank Dikötter talks about it in his excellent trilogy. If the village farming tools belong to everyone, they belong to no one, and so no one takes any responsibility for anything and everything just goes to wrack and ruin. I think that kind of socialism/collective ownership can only work in small groups of extremely dedicated people (usually religious, like the Hutterites or Puritans or allegedly the early church. Even the Israeli secular Kibbutzim have mostly gone the way of the dodo).
@@sciloj That "it's all people's property" is a huge deal, I agree. I had a summer job in railroad construction here in Finland (generally a well-off country) and they used to have walkie-talkies that weren't assigned to any one person so no one bothered to make sure they were fully charged and when people got annoyed that the walkie-talkie they picked up didn't work, they might throw them around in frustration and they'd get banged up or even actually break. Everyone disliked them because you could never be sure the one you picked up worked the whole work day. The higher-ups decided to get new walkie-talkies and this time they assigned everyone their own walkie-talkie with their name-tag. Suddenly they were always charged (since you wanted to make sure yours worked instead of previously making sure someone else's worked) and no one threw them around in anger as you'd just end up breaking your own stuff. Of course you didn't own it per se, but you did have a sense of ownership. This is one of those stories that really solidify to me why socialism will never work, and I'm kinda saddened by the fact. Humans are inherently very selfish and though we're capable of great feats of generosity and selfless acts, it's just not the average way we operate.
I never thought I’d say this: but I’m actually happy to see you have a sponsor and that your channel is growing. Your channel is awesome and you stand out in the crowd with your depth of knowledge in the realm of military affairs and international relations. Keep up the good work!
I don't mind the sponsorship segment. It's short, it's indexed, it was somewhat relevant. But now I'm waiting for, "This video is sponsored by Raid: Shadow Legends ..." They show up on every YT channel that does sponsorships, so it's only a matter of time. I won't mind that either, but it'll be vaguely amusing.
When I first went to Africa one thing that really shocked me was that corruption isn't solely at the top. I assumed, utterly wrongly, that corruption in Africa was only the presidents , politicians and generals and CEOs. ...but no. Corruption is at all levels of society. In a corrupt country everyone is corrupt. Form the small farmer to the small shop owner to the taxi driver to the hotel staff to the office workers and everyone in-between. Corruption is an insidious cancer.
It is a very American thing, to think that the leaders' corruption doesn't reflect the people. I understand why, non-repping leaders are a lot easier to fix in a democracy.
@@suddenllybah lol. In the country I live, both the leaders and the people are corrupt, beyond reasonable measure. It's just an endless feedback loop with no end in sight.
I've got to say, where do you think tipping started? It's literally bribing someone to not f up their job they're already being paid to do. It's just become legally acceptable bribery in places, especially if it allows an excuse to not pay workers the 'minimum' amount they're due.
@@thomasparkin259 thanks grandpa, but we’re talking about the military and you still need to tip. The waitress will spit in your French onion soup if you don’t.
My father was a professional military officer of the USA. He ran a large Depot in South Korea. Despite all the auditing, security, etc, there was theft. Over a year of watching and investigating, there were no holes. This is a large area, like miles by miles wide and about 10 layers high on shelves with heavy, heavy equipment and supplies. One day a Sargent noticed that next to one of these weighty shelves there were some scrape marks on the floor, like the shelves had moved. So some heavy equipment was brought in to move the shelves to see if there was anything odd under it. Surprisingly these shelves moved a lot easier that 10's of tons of weight should have. They discovered that there was a hole cut under the shelves with a massive hydraulic lift under the shelves in a tunnel big enough for two lanes of trucks to drive in and out of. This tunnel ran about 12 miles to a bank on a river, which suspiciously had a rather large dock in the middle of nowhere. As at this point the Korean War had been over many decades ago it appears someone arranged to dig this tunnel through solid rock over the period of years, then cut the hold that was just slightly smaller than the shelves, and then brought in the lift from the river and placed it in place to lift the shelves without displacing anything so as to not attract attention. And that is how you do graft and theft if you have enough money and time. The Army proceeded to move all the shelves and fortunately there were not more tunnels. The dock was destroyed, the tunnel was filled with various items to make it unusable. But one never knows if this was redone later to a different shelve. Or was this going on at all the other Depots. They were checked and nothing found, if all those searching for it were to be trusted.
I'm willing to bet it was the local Koreans who had insights into that Depot who did it. That's a lot of manpower, labor, and time and doesn't sound like a small operation. It would only be worth it for the poorer locals.
@@hydroaegis6658 A 12 mile tunnel through solid rock for two lanes of trucks to drive in and out of? Something is not right about that story. That would take 5 years with a tunnel boring machine.
A great example is Russia's Aircraft carrier. The floating dry dock it was parked in had a power failure and sank the whole carrier, doing millions in damage, all because the funds to fuel the backup generators had been stolen.
@@johanj3674 Russia keeps saying they want to be a great power which means projecting influence overseas. If you’re fighting for your allies and have access to their facilities, you’re fine without a carrier. But if you’re threatening or even fighting your enemies overseas, you may not have access to nearby military facilities. Thus the Russians need a carrier to be a great power. A carrier is essentially a military base that you can move.
@@kurousagi8155 Yes, but a carrier without support (ships and repair infrastructure) is like a Gucci bag without credit cards or money. (And by ships I mean more than the tugboats required to drag it around.) It’s a status item more than it is a weapon.
Corruption is one of those self perpetuating issues where corruption up top results in desperation down low. The soldier looting food may be doing a bad thing, but the ultimate culprit is the rich general who skimmed off the cash meant to go towards rations
It’s especially self-perpetuating if you have to give 10% of your skim to the guy above you. Putin might not have been aware of the true state of the Russian military, but did he ever wonder where his cut of the action came from?
For another good example, look at the Italian battleship littorio. The quality control on the shells was terrible, but it capable of extreme levels of accuracy with good ones. The quality inspectors mysteriously always managed to find good ammo, even on surprise visits
I once had a tank company commander in the army, he was a very unique individual (nowadays he's a higher up in the army). he used to tell us that he believes that "a good soldier is a soldier that has it good" (sounds better in the original language) - anyway, the point was, if the soldier is well off in terms of conditions, food, sleep, etc.... essentially their SIM parameters are up, they will do well, they will want to contribute, they will be motivated to help the collective. That resonates with me while listening to around 38:00
I think there is another factor besides corruption that has an impact, and that is about military culture (and also Russian Culture). 1. Russia doesn't trust or develop junior leadership, issues that mean that those who practice corruption have no one blowing whistles on them, and the troops have no one else to look to. 2. Russia doesn't train. During the Cold War, I always thought it was just politics when the Soviets would object to every NATO exercise, and expected NATO to object to every training exercise they ran, regardless of location. I no longer think it was politics (or not entirely politics) but rather was a completely different view of what training exercises are for. NATO countries use training exercises to practice techniques and improve performance through critique and the application of lessons learned. Training exercises, used this way, improve the military. What I am convinced that the Soviets (and now the Russians) think that training exercises are for is the same as what military parades are for - they are for showing off military power, are a way of indirectly threatening with military movement/exhibition. The commentaries that I have heard from former soldiers of the Red Army of what they did during exercises, the comments made by the soldiers captured by the Ukrainians in the north early in this war, and the videos that the Russian Ministry of Defense have released showing Guards and VDV demonstrating that even basic Infantry tactics and skills are not practiced in the Russian Army. Add Putin (and other Russian officials) threats to move nukes close to borders or build military bases in areas, neither of which make any tactical or strategic sense, it continues to suggest that Russia is not doing any exercises, not critiquing, not learning any lessons. If you haven't seen the Finnish Colonel's video regarding Russian culture and stealing, it's worth watching - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-kF9KretXqJw.html
In the late 1980s as the Cold War was winding down, a US general was invited to visit Russia for several days on an exchange program. He was taken to a field site and sat in a glass booth on a podium to observe an "exercise." The resemblance to a parade booth was not lost on him. Also, there were deep ruts in the dirt field where the tanks had driven over the exact same spot countless times and they did again when he was there. In his opinion, what they called "training" we in the west would call a "rehearsal."
@@tm5123 Suosittelen Martti Karin videoita lämpimästi, niitä löytyy RU-vidsta kun syöttää hänen nimensä hakukenttään. Toinen asiantuntija josta tykkään on Pekka Toveri. Kantsii tsekata.
Thanks for posting !! Here is another one from a ruzzian officer, from his captured phone, showing examples of why the army is a failure of your culture example. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-WIZIspwem2s.html&ab_channel=%D0%A3%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%97%D0%BD%D1%81%D1%8C%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%B4%D0%B0 Slava Ukraine, and thanks to the crude failure ruzzia is proving to be.
@@arrowsarikoski9740 Pekka Toveri is excellent. Former chief intelligence officer of the general staff, former commander of Guard Jager Regiment and the Armored Brigade - he really knows his stuff and his analysis have been insightful and spot on. The interviews have not been translated into English, so those who don't know Finnish are out of luck, unfortunately.
_"This is not a study on how to corrupt a military, it's not an how-to guide"_ Sure buddy, NileRed made a similar disclaimer in his video about uranium. 🤪
I've listened to parts of this three times and all of it twice. Brilliant! I learned a lot of things about organizations, both military and civilian. It prompted me to rethink the apparent performance of the Russian armed forces. More of this sort of thing on you channel would be well received by me, and I'm sure many others. Good stuff!
From someone with 17 years in public procurement, in a country that ranks around Russia in its corruption rating, I would humbly add three points to your thorough presentation: 1) Nobody is stealing 20% of anything or everything. Things are either in or out of the "bussines". If a procurement is within the boundaries of a corruption network, the drainage will likely be from 50-80%. A 20% "inefficiency" is just Third World waistage. 2) Transparency means very little. Everyone knows what the deal is, who is in, and who and what is not. 3) Taking part of a corruption network is more dangerous than not doing so. That is why is not as widespread as it is believed (and why Im still alive and walking). I know it is hard to grasp from an advanced democracy. It is very different. I guess the closest picture you can get is narco cartels, or italian mobster movies. Very interesting video. Struck really close on a personal level. Please keep up your excellent work.
The construction project i was on in Sri Lanka, I decided it would be dangerous for me to walk around site. Not just because construction sites are inherently dangerous (this was possibly one of the better ones with safety though it is a relative thing) so much as I really didn't want to have someone either accidentally land on me, or find it was landing on something. So once it was above ground level, I never went onto site.
Thank you, these points make a lot of sense. In a corruption network I assume the danger is not just from the anti-corruption forces but also from corrupt peers. If Anders Åslund is to be believed, your country's corruption is small beer; he says that Russian corruption is the world's worst by a large margin.
i worked close with malaysia authorities, some as high as minister's PAs. can't tell you what the deals were but i can tell you that if you are willing to pay up 30~50% of the project cost as "gift" in advance, you can secure a 100~200% profit project easy. there are even agents walking around seeking potential cooperation between contractors and officers.
When I was in the military ( early 90's in Poland) the tank crews used to steal diesel fuel by simply stating that the tank didn't start of first try. As the machine would consume a couple dozen liters just for an attempted start, 3 such failures would give you a good dime when sold to the local farmer ;)
I'm a civilian in the US. About 10 years ago, I received an invitation from a Navy friend to spend 2 days on the nuclear Aircraft Carrier, the USS Nimitz. I was part of a group of about 20 civilians who visited at the same time. We were constantly encouraged, and given unsupervised time, to ask naval personnel (mostly at the lower levels) how they liked their jobs. The responses were about 95% positive. The few who had complaints were mostly those who felt they deserved promotions to higher-skilled positions. We got a couple about the mess hall but my own experience was that the food was plentiful and good. I was completely surprised by the sense of openness amongst the crew and their higher-ups. And for reasons too numerous to mention here, I was absolutely blown away by the skills and professionalism of every member of the flight crew and the encouragement they received to provide critical feedback to each other.
I’ve worked on movie crews where lunch is catered, and by the third or fourth week, even if the food is quite good, there is noticeable grumbling. But if one were to eat at the same restaurant every day for weeks, one might get bored. One might fixate on trivial dissatisfactions. And some people just like to grumble. For those who might be offended by the grumbling because “these workers are getting a free meal and I don’t get a free meal at my work”, these meals (and the craft service snacks) are contractual obligations, not free. There are also important reasons why employers (producers) want to feed everyone in one place and not have them go wandering off in search of a place to eat.
Hey there. Another awesome video. I'm from Ukraine, my dad served in both armies (ukraine & russia) as an officer. I can't claim I know a lot about corruption (literal evidence) but I had stories directly from people involved in some supplies & reviews. Here's 3 specific stories: 1. A person in Russia is an officer with the Army who is responsible for checking living conditions around the country. E.g., you travel to different military bases and check if those are OK for people to live inside. Now this person told me a couple of stories about visiting military bases that - literally - had no windows installed because people stole the money. Soldiers would tape the windows or buy those themselves. It's especially bad if you go middle of russia and further to the right (siberia all that stuff). Nobody ever gets into trouble because of this. 2. A person that was working in 90s with rocket supplies, told that they were taking old rockets (end of life or almost end of life) -> removing plates with dates -> putting those plates on new rockets and then sending those to Africa or Middle East. Once again, you switch new with old rockets and them decommission them to some 3rd world country. Make nice profits in the process. 3. Old these legacy vehicle storages are ideal for stealing money. Every time a new officer joins or takes control of such site, they go around and search for stuff that can be stolen. Then you start noticing that your friend's dad, who is an ordinary mechanic in some 3rd rate military base, starts buying apartments and nice cars. All these stories took place in Russian but I must admit, Ukraine has a lot of the same issues.
Very thought provoking. Pity the poor conscripts in the Russian armed forces. The concept of a whole culture of corruption never crossed my mind until your programme. Thank you.
In Denmark it took 200 years to get corruption close to 0 , and you need to continue fighting against it or it will come back. But it’s worth the fight. Corruption is a weapon of mass self destruction.
Man he didn't just explain why corruption is bad, he went to outer space, got a comet and smashed it on the topic. I have never seen an explanation take a swing this long make so much sense afterwards in so little time. The stories told here may be true, unknown or false, but they sure make a lot of sense and the described picture fits what we've seen. He has this topic really well thought through, even with the according economic terminology, it's a masterpiece.
I think you are right to emphasize the damage done to the culture of a military by corruption, and the impact of a poor culture/ethos on a fighting force in general. The dispersed nature of corruption, how it saps away the effectiveness of a military indirectly and in ways that are manageable until the point of crisis; if we take the Swiss cheese model and apply it to a military, corruption makes those holes exponentially more likely to line up and lead to a systems failure.
Such lack of bias, such diligent presentation of facts. Perun you are incredible. You are not shilling for one side at all. You are such a glorious fact machine and we are all thankful for your incredible insights. Your and infographics channel are such gems. Glory to Perun and the Western empire!
I was reminded throughout this excellent video of endemic corruption in the Queensland police force in the 1960s-70s. The state premier at the time was actually not personally corrupt -- he was just a simple-minded fanatic -- but he appointed ministers who were deeply and openly corrupt, and the rot went from top to bottom of the police. The measures you list at the end were all familiar to me as ways the Queensland police force was eventually straightened out.
I can confirm that. I was an airsoft player for many years. Almost everybody I knew from this hobby had a specific Russian in his FB friendliest who supplied us with military grade Russian gear since we exclusively played Blufor vs Redfor. He posted huge ass stockpiles of helmets, vests, knee pads, radios etc
I think I know exactly who you're talking about. A bunch of people from my group of airsofters got their hands on actual real steel optics, grips, stocks, handguards, helmets, vests, knee pads, slings. The most surprising, however, was two nightvision goggles. Honest to God they were actual military NVGs, Russian design. Bought by two of the richest milsimers in the community. Mostly to showoff, like a novelty item.
An hour? It was closer to an hour and a half as I kept going back to listen more closely to what you were saying. This has been one of the BEST programs I've listened to lately. Period. Your material was top notch and your delivery was perfect. You confirmed what I thought was going on with the Russian military. Again, thank you very much!
A lot of valid points about how corruption affects the material effectiveness of the military. I remember my father telling me stories of his experiences as a (British) military engineer in WW2 that were incredibly reminiscent of this. There was an occasion during the Phoney War (1939-40) when he came across an entire field full of military transport trucks, none of which were usable because key components (high-value electrical engine parts) had 'gone missing'. Had those trucks been available when they were needed the course of the German invasion of Belgium and France in Spring 1940 might have been very different. There is another way corruption works, which is like Chinese Whispers. People exaggerate their achievements to their boss to make themselves look better, especially if their promotion or even long-term survival depends on them looking good. Based on the optimistic reports fed back to them, the bosses make inappropriate dispositions and plans, which the underlings find impossible to do, so they again embroider the truth.
49:24 On rotating personnel. You're not wrong. However, it's important to note that rotation also makes it a lot harder for a corrupt person to cover their tracks once they are longer in the role. It's a combination not just of the fresh set of eyes being able to spot the corruption, but also the old person no longer being around to try and make their corruption undetectable. I'm an accountant so I've got loads of examples of rotation of employees uncovering corruption, but know that even something as small as instituting mandatory vacations can cut down on corruption and fraud.
The theft parts is most common with conscripts, back in 2010 when the new EMR Camo was released instantly uniforms landed on ebay, the current top of the line OVR 3Sh suits are also already being sold in private structures. And about Ratnik, it's one of the most sold gearset of the russian Army that is being actively stolen.
Definitely seen this. Had a collector friend come in from California and his carryon was the newest model backpack that had started to be issued in December of 2021. He had it in hand when he visited in March of 2022
I'm already missing the "prewar" days when you could get a lot of that stuff on eBay. I managed to get a 6e4 Ratnik watch and an MDL hat in MVD/Rosgvardia Kukla pattern.
Outstanding explanation of the damaging effect of corruption in a military enviroment, from the generals to the privates. It begins with contract bidding, and goes all the way down to privates on the front line..
I could watch the Monaco Grand Prix, or I could watch a PowerPoint deck on cash flows in government. Legitimately difficult decision, and that speaks to the quality of this man’s work.
As a German the words about „specifications tailoring“ we’re pretty interesting. I sometimes feel like in some projects the specifications are changed so many time and everything is redesigned as many times till „enough“ money is spend. The Russian Army is corrupt on a different level, but I feel western armies are also ripe with corruption at least in the procurement process…That is also why I have mixed feelings about the military spending increase I don’t think everything will be great once you throw enough money on it, there are some systemic problems. The German Army seems to be quite inefficient at spending their budget. In the media and public we blame many scandals on just incompetence, but tbh I am not sure, there are people after all who profit from procurement projects getting drastically over budget. Also if you want to read about some quite disturbing corruption in the past. Read about the Lockheed bribery scandal, I believe 200 German pilots lost their live because the aircraft was pretty unsafe and there were some bribery cases with German top German politicians. So my suspicion is not coming out of nowhere.
Yes, as an American the level of "legalized bribery" at the highest levels in the public sector is absurd - lies about pricing or timetable, bad faith RFP's and rigged competition, kickbacks for local politicians, friends on the board, cushy jobs on retirement, the works. So many "lobbyists" as former ranking military or highly placed bureaucrats, ditto for non defense sectors as well. As the saying goes, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I guess the real difference between East and West is that over here, corruption by the little guy gets cracked down on hard, but the guys at the top get away with the same old shit.
The same stuff happens in the west. Its just done more professionally and on a higher level, so that the people under your Boss think everything is not corrupt when it fact it is. Still not ideal, but much better then what is/was happening in communist eastern europe, its were this type of corruption culture comes from. In the west, someone just gets the deal for a new research project, or a seat at the board of a company, in the east it happens like stated in the video on all levels.
An issue I've personally seen is that engineers at (insert contractor here) can make money for themselves and their company by convincing the military that every single time something is changed in the various iterations of a system it needs a plethora of COMPLETELY REDESIGNED (tm) components. For instance, let's say you build a radar set. Let's say this radar set was marketed to the military as modular and multi-task capable. But lo, it turns out that if you mount it on a truck you need one mount, if you mount it on a boat another, if you mount it in a helicopter a third, and of course if you use it as a stand alone you need a tripod. Ok, fair enough, but then all of a sudden you need COMPLETELY REDESIGNED (tm) electrical connectors for each implementation. That means the air mounted radar set has an entirely different model number, and is not "the same thing" as either the ground or the truck set. Hell, the naval version of the mount also needs hydraulic fittings which means it's now an entirely different *class* of equipment. And each and every one of these sets, all with their completely different mounting hardware and electrical connection systems, are now not very modular anymore, because as far as the military is concerned they are *entirely seperate and not interchangeable things,* and there is no way the infantry version could ever be made to work on a helicopter. Now the military MUST buy more radar sets, and they MUST pay for ever more complex tooling to manufacture the various models of radar set, and they MUST sign four seperate contracts for what is essentially only one thing, and all this time the engineer gets a nice fat bonus for taking one mount or one electrical connector and simply moving a pin or a screw over 5mm a bunch of different times because that means he COMPLETELY REDESIGNED (tm) the fucking thing. I think a strong part of why this works is that military officers are rarely technical engineers, and almost universally have no experience in manufacturing, and therefore can be convinced to believe a great deal many things which simply aren't true, but do give quite a lot of leeway (and extra money) to industry. Combine this with the inevitability of feature bloat and the fact that many types of iteration are far easier than almost any non engineer would believe, (let alone colonels who've never even seen the inside of a prototype fabrication shop) and you get a whole lot of extra millions paid and extra time allocated to programs for very simple things.
Searching for 'The Lockheed Bribery Scandal' points to a _list_ of scandals, _plural_ . Disturbing indeed. Here are some minor corrections and clarifications. The number of pilots who died in accidents in the F-104 in West German service is 116, including 8 USAF instructors. West Germany wasn't the only operator of the type and the deaths in other services are sometimes included in the total. Also, the number of West Germans who lost their lives is the figure quoted sometimes, which include the pilots and people on the ground. Saying the aircraft 'was pretty unsafe' is accurate enough; in West German service 32% of aircraft were lost in accidents. Personally, I'd describe the F-104 as a good aircraft and regarding West German service I'd add "categorically unsuited" , "inevitably disastrous" , and "possibly the worst plane for the job" In a lot of corruption cases the decisions made are questionable, but with exaggerated benefits, hidden/downplayed flaws, and/or mistaken assumptions it's atleast plausible. For the German F-104 no part of this was a good idea. It's handling characteristics were known. Maneuverability is the opposite of stability and higher top speed comes with higher landing/takeoff speed. The F-104 is challenging to fly for the same reasons it's contemporaries are, though some moreso than others. Giving any of them to a pilot whose only experience is with the early subsonic jets is inviting disaster. The F-104 is especially unforgiving. That's bad enough, but the role as a fighter-bomber is indefensible, completely insane. The F-104 is a good air superiority fighter and interceptor, its designed to fly fast at high altitude and maneuver in those conditions while carrying an air-to-air armament. Flying low while laden with air to ground ordnance and the additional avionics they require is pretty far outside the design specification. It's also more workload for the pilot, who already has his hands full just flying the plane.
Extremely interesting! So logical, but your breakdown of the effects of corruption on the various levels is a real eye opener for me! Thanks for all the effort you’ve put into this video. Much appreciated.
the quality of your powerpoint presentations is on a level with the best university lectures i've attended. well structured, well paced, clearly defined subjects, and superbly informative. very much a pleasure to attend. also, GG on the sponsorship!
This has been the vid that captivated me the most out of all your excellent vids, Perun. I was in the US Coast Guard (91-01') and simply never thought about this kind of corruption. We Coasties, like the other branches, had bureaucracy issues but otherwise did our jobs to a level that was efficient. When my ship visited Petropolovska(spelling?) In Russia, we were hosted by a Russian Marine Border Guard ship that was 12 years newer than ours but was grossly rusted. I just thought they were destitute. Mayheps some corruption was at play with the zero upkeep!
I work in IT, and have been involved with system testing for years. One of my mantras is that if your testing plan doesn't uncover any issues, you don't have a perfect system, you have a lousy testing plan. IN the military this gets compounded by another set of perverse incentives. Captain Ivan Ivanovitch's job is to have his infantry company ready for combat. The general orders an excersise to evaluate his unit's readyness. Since they don't have the right equipment and haven't been training, their performance is sub-standard. But it was his job to make sure they were ready. He has two main options. He can report his unit's deficinecies, request more equpment and training time, but thus reveal that he had not been doing his job adequately. This will likely get him fired or otherwise disciplined. Or he can pencil-whip his test results and say that all of his troops met or exceeded expectations (and maybe call out that weasel he doesn't like as a star performer who deserves to be promoted and sent to a special school so he'll never see him again). Higher command then compiles all of these "Lake Woebegone" reports (where all of the children are above average), and think that they have the capacity to, for instance purely hypothetically, invade and overtake a neighboring country in a couple of weeks.
I imagine that the nature of a defensive war decreases the corruption in Ukraine. There is direct motivation to make sure that the troops are armed if their failure could lead to your death at the hands of an invading army. This goes double for the grunts.
Great presentation, thanks! In former Yugoslavia, in their armed forces, it was said that "everybody stole everything, yet everybody had everything". And that went from the bottom up, and vice versa. A lot of equipment and funds were likely stolen. Even with subsequent wars, there are still stories of equipment being sold off years before and after the war. So, this is more than believable.
To make a crude analogy to war board games: You are playing as Russia. But you don't know that the General stole one of the dice, the Supply Officer probably removed the 6's, the 3's have half faded away from neglect, and the conscripts might need to eat a few dots from each of the remaining sides to make bearable the shitty days you have assigned them. You're position will still look good on the board. It's only when you start rolling that you realize something is terribly wrong.
Imagine playing Starcraft, but when you attack you realize your marines are dealing half damage, your tanks can't move and your battlecruisers have no cannons.
@@archermahou8910 this makes me wonder if it would be possibly olto make a strategy game that built in 'realistic' mechanics like corruption, morale, weather and climate, -war crimes- ...
That’d be an interesting (if hellish) mutator for Coop: The stats look fine from the outside but shit starts going wrong when you make them and try to use them.
I have personally seen Russian soldiers at the Russian War Museum selling medals and other decorations from their uniforms. They would direct you to a corner where they knew there was no security camera coverage and point at the medals and indicate how much. At that time it was $20.
Very enlightening. My careers in management and purchasing trained me in what to avoid to prevent corruption, but this is the best explanation I've seen on why it is so crucially important. I wish I had seen this discussion earlier.. Our culture emphasises what is good and right, but never so much why it is important or what consequences, other than legal, occur. Thank you for this perspective.
As someone, who restores old vehicles, I find your analogy with the main main wiring harness especially appealing. Not only are the copper wires gone, but with it all the information, the wiring harness includes. And this is also no easy fix. "Just replace the wiring harness!" is not possible if there were changes between models of the tank for example. And if a single connector of the new harness does not fit, some poor engineer gets to go into the archive and research the exact same model of the tank and its components. And even then (maybe an incomplete archive - which is a total possible in EVERY company in the west and totally in Russia) it might not even be possible to recreate that harness. So, Yes: 500€ gone trough corruption, 2 Million € damage because the tank is now spare parts
Please continue to branch out to topics that are beyond just this current conflict. You're insight is helpful even to people in the defense industry (me for example). This format and military topics are a good fit for you and hope to see more. Have a good day.
I worked for a US defense company some years ago and they had a newsletter that would always publish the new hires for leadership. You would frequently see that a new Vice President of broom-closets was hired and that their past work experience included being a high level pronouncement officer for some 5 billion dollar program that my company has secured. It really looked like everyone involved with awarding multi billion dollar contracts was guaranteed a VP job if they gave the contract to my company.
