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1/ A retired Russian tank battalion commander has given a frank interview about the rampant corruption that he says has led to the “complete collapse of the Russian army” in the last 16 years. His comments highlight how the army has rotted from within during the Putin era.

2/ I’ve previously covered the Russian military’s corruption problems at some length (see the nested threads below). But the interview of former army major “Alexander Rozhkov” – a pseudonym – provides rare and extensive personal insights into the problem.

3/ Rozhkov, a St. Petersburger, served for 15 years and resigned from the army at the age of 36 shortly before the Ukraine war begin. He says he decided that he did not want to “degrade further in this system” and has since been avoiding mobilisation orders.

4/ Rozkhov blames many of the problems on the military reforms begun in the 2000s under then-Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov. At that time, the mandatory length of service for conscripts was reduced from two years to one year. According to Rozhkov, this was disastrous.

5/ “When the Russian army began to serve for one year we practically lost a whole chain of junior commanders. Because with the two-year service, during the [first] year the newcomers were taught some things related to technical specialities by the older servicemen.

6/ “And when they switched to [only] a year of service, there was no one to teach them. Now a soldier can only learn to sweep in a year. And at best he’ll take a couple of trips to the firing range. He’ll hold an automatic rifle, and in a month he’ll have forgotten how to do it.

7/ “No one has even taught them anything close to military training.”

8/ At the same time, officers and NCOs from the conscript army were selected to become professional “contract” soldiers. But Rozhkov says this too was done in a disastrous way, leading to many unsuitable people becoming today’s senior officers.

9/ “There were telegrams from the top, that it was necessary to select the best officers and the best non-commissioned officers who had one year of service left. And to send them to the training centres.

10/ “But they began to send not the best officers, but the most lousy ones, who had already annoyed everyone in the unit. And sergeants – the worst scoundrels. Well, there was mayhem and mass drunkenness in these centres. Nobody taught anybody anything.

11/ “And from the outside, the contract servicemen were mostly from the edge of society, as a rule. Those who were unable to prove themselves in civilian life. Alcoholics, parasites and all sorts of scumbags. But in the army you didn’t have to do anything.

12/ “You had to line up in the morning, wiggle your head, walk around and you got your pay. And then they’d give you an apartment. I just decided to walk away from it all.”

13/ As a result of the corruption, he says, Russia’s colonels and lieutenant colonels are largely useless. Rozhkov says they would be in absolutely no demand in civilian life and are employed in the army as metaphorical “barrier openers”.

14/ Rozhkov says that “window dressing” permeates the army at all levels, with units’ readiness routinely faked for the benefit of senior officers. He was not surprised at the many complaints that have emerged of faulty and outdated equipment.

15/ “So you have 18 command and staff vehicles in your unit, and only two of them are operational. When the inspection comes, these two working vehicles move from one unit to another, to be photographed and [a report] is sent upstairs. We are fine, look. And this is everywhere.”

17/ Anton Igolkin, a graduate of the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, recalls how it worked in his conscript training a few years ago when he did his military training in his last year at the university.

18/ “We were never taken to the firing range. Instead, we just took photos [of ourselves] with guns. Every morning started with a burst of patriotic spirit.

19/ “It was quite funny, because the Russian national anthem was played through an iPhone and played on an old Soviet loudspeaker. The unit commander drank every day.

20/ “After the second bottle of vodka he would crawl into his Land Cruiser and drive at breakneck speed around the compound. How he didn’t hit anyone, it’s a wonder.”

21/ Tank training was also routinely faked. Crews are supposed to do a certain amount of hours in their tanks, but Rozkhov says that this was faked by “winding up” the tanks to ensure the instruments showed the mandated amount of mileage.

22/ “Technically it’s not hard to do. The track shaft is removed from the chain links and the running tank simply stands still and runs idle. Subsequently, the perfect, brand new equipment, which has never been driven anywhere, is simply written off and sent to a special base.”

23/ Money for maintenance was routinely stolen, requiring junior officers to make so-called “voluntary-compulsory contributions” from their own salaries to make up the shortfall – part of a phenomenon known as “officer slavery”.

24/ Rozkov comments: “But no one, of course, came to the unit commander and said: “Comrade Colonel, my barracks is not painted because there is no paint.” And if someone did come, there was such a response that it’s hard to call it an insult. I’m not going to reproduce it.

25/ “In literary terms, the point was this: “I don’t even care how you do it. Just do it, and that’s it.””

Promotion is also subject to corruption, with officers obtaining seniority through bribes paid to the commander of the unit.

26/ “Let’s say your term to get a rank came up but there was no position available. So they call you up and say: look, there’s a vacancy here, but you’re not the only one applying for it.

27/ “A silent auction begins between those who are more or less sane, who can write, read and speak. And the highest bidder wins in the end. When I had to get a captaincy, they asked me to pay 150,000 rubles [$1,777] for the post of company commander. That was still inexpensive.”

28/ Many officers compensate for their expenditure by extorting money from subordinates. Rozkhov says that platoon commanders, through their non-commissioned officers, forced conscripts to write letters home with requests to send remittances which the officers then stole.

29/ Some company commanders objected to this practice and tried to stop it, but Rozkhov says that the military investigating authorities did not care at all about what was happening and did nothing about it.

30/ Igolkin experienced this first-hand. “I still remember frozen beef carcasses with the ink stamp ‘1974’ and poor conscripts with grey faces, who went around begging for cigarettes from us,...

31/ ...explaining that they will be beaten up by their ‘grandfathers’ [older servicemen] and sergeants if they don’t bring their smokes. And at the military department itself they were already extorting bribes from us.

32/ “Two colonels from Moscow, who taught us, blackmailed everyone that they would fail the final exam and forced us to contribute money.

33/ “And when one of the students complained to the university’s management, these soldiers didn’t just apologise, they publicly threatened the guy who had complained. They asked him in public if he knew what it felt like to be squeezed out of a toothpaste tube.”

34/ Another common scam is to charge subordinates to approve their leave. When Rozkhov was serving, the bribe was 1,000 rubles ($12) a day. He says it’s now 2,500 ($30). (On the front line in Ukraine, it’s now reportedly as much as 100,000 ($1,188).)

35/ Many Russian soldiers have complained, before and during the war, that they have been unable to get uniforms in the sizes they need. Mobilised men have often ended up buying their own uniforms – or outdoor clothes of some kind at least – from camping stores.

36/ In Igolkin’s case, he recalls that the men at his training camp for conscripts were given only “some mismatched shirts” as uniforms. There were no boots at all, so they were allowed to wear their own shoes.

37/ Much of this is due to corrupt quartermasters who make extra money by selling military stores, as Rozkhov notes. “Military jackets, for example, are gladly taken by fishermen engaged in winter fishing. They can buy such clothes for a whole fishing party of 10-15 people.”

38/ Rozkhov saw many other things being stolen from military stores, from uniforms to equipment to diesel fuel. (In one spectacular example I reported on previously, thieves made off with a 72-ton prefabricated bunker.)

39/ Stolen clothing is written off to ‘dead souls’ – fictitious soldiers who, Rozhkov says, exist in every military unit. This is a scam which dates back to tsarist times and was the focus of a famous novel by Gogol in 1842. Some dead souls, as Rozhkov found, are very much alive.

40/ The scheme Rozhkov describes is not complicated: an ex-soldier wanting some extra money negotiates a fictitous return to the army with the unit’s commander or chief of staff. He’s put back on the payroll as a ‘dead soul’ and shares his salary with his uniformed ‘sponsor’.

41/ The ‘dead soul’ doesn’t do any actual military service. He only shows up at the unit during inspections, so that the scam can keep going. The rest of the unit is, of course, fully aware of what is going on.

42/ Rozhkov saw this first-hand in his unit. “One day I come to the formation, and I turn my head sideways – there are two warrant officers standing there. And I see them for the first time. So I understood that the two of them were Armenians. Our commander was also an Armenian.

43/ “I see that some people from the Investigative Committee are walking around and I understood at once that they are the commander’s dead souls. They come up to me and ask if I know these people. Well, if I am in the system, I am not going to set up the commander.

44/ “I said that yes, I see them every day, but I do not know them personally. Then the commander was prosecuted anyway and after the trial he was fined half a million ($5,923) and dismissed.

45/ But when the dismissal documents were sent to Moscow in a special car, they simply did not get there. Probably the Armenian diaspora got involved. So he worked his way up to retirement. Then he wrote a report and left.”

46/ Some commanders came up with more creative ideas to make money on the side. In 2010, Rozkhov says, his regiment was doing tank training exercises in the Vladimir region. “We went to the training area, practiced riding and firing.

47/ “And the regiment leadership had a genius idea - why not to make some more money out of it. Some people found, who were ready to pay for that to ride on the tank and to shoot. Civilians, you know? Nothing to do with the army. A tank safari for the rich.

48/ “And two conscripts got crushed to death as a result.” The incident was hushed up.

Rozhkov is highly critical of the army’s failure to provide its soldiers with modern equipment. “I never saw any novelties there during the whole time of my service.

49/ “I had a 1961 submachine gun when I was at the college. Then “new” armament started coming in and the submachine gun was made in 1978. And after the Kalashnikov assault rifle, nothing else appeared in our army.

50/ “We like to show off at various forums and exhibitions: look what a splendid plane we have. Well, we have just one! What an awesome automatic rifle we’ve made! Yes, but we haven’t put it into mass production to staff the army.”

51/ Having experienced war as a tank battalion commander in South Ossetia in 2008, when he suffered a wound from a landmine explosion, Rozkhov is not keen to repeat the experience of going to the “aid” of a hostile population.

52/ “I remember very well how the local population there felt towards Russian soldiers. Many Ossetians told us openly that we were occupiers just as much as the Georgians. After a curfew it was better not to show our faces on the street in uniform so as not to lose our heads.”

53/ Rozkhov is deeply sceptical of Putin’s motives and has no desire to go to Ukraine. “I just don’t understand why I have to die for some czar who got bored at the age of 70, or maybe he got schizophrenic and decided to feel like Tamerlane, to conquer something.” /end

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