How Corruption Destroys Armies - Theft, Graft, and Russian failure in Ukraine

[@PerunAU]

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

[@scorbiot]

Remember: unlike fiction, reality doesn't have to sound plausible!

[@entropyachieved750]

Good presentation; what is your background? Hello from Newcastle

[@FuriousImp]

Thanks Perun! Keep them coming!

[@noneofyourbusiness4133]

This sponsorship is AWESOME! I actually think this will be super useful, thank you so much for working with some people this wonderful.

[@Shinimusha]

@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.

[@SnibediSnabs]

Back in the day when I was doing my mandatory service in the Finnish Defense Forces, I remember being a bit annoyed by a few things. For example, whenever anyone misplaced (or "misplaced") a piece of equipment, the whole platoon would be sent to search for it, sometimes for hours, and if it was even remotely valuable, everyone's pockets and personal lockers would get checked. If it was not found, the one who lost it would have to fill out a mountain of paperwork and have the value docked from his pay. Another thing I found puzzling was how tightly the fuel depot was locked down. Everyone had a personal refueling card that tracked who was refueling how much into what vehicle and when, and the whole process was very strictly logged and monitored. Once, one of the less scrupulous individuals in my company refueled his own car at the depot, and when he was inevitably caught it became a veeery big issue. After seeing how badly corruption can eat away military combat capabilities from within, I definitely am a lot more happy and understanding about all that oversight and regulation being in place now.

[@patrickdtodd]

I had a similar experience when I was on active duty in the U.S. Army. This video gives a good big picture view of why far less corrupt militaries take great pains to track their assets and prevent the low level corruption that is plaguing Russia.

[@alexanderdumas870]

Reminds me of OG Top Gun. "That isn't your plane, Maverick, it's the tax payer's." Or something along those lines.

[@5cats267]

Exactly same story in Egyptian army.. A friend of mine was in service and one of his colleagues lost a piece of his weapon which is easily replacable in a military's exercise.. the entire platoon goes out in desert to search even in the night!!!

[@HANKTHEDANKEST]

What a perfect example, too: you're Finnish, just over the border from Russia. Makes for a pretty stark comparison: competent, fastidious Finland vs. slothful, incompetent Russia.

[@rangergxi]

@@5cats267 and yet the Egyptian army is corrupt at the highest levels. Penny wise, dollar stupid.

[@keef920]

“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.”

[@yourmanjimbo]

Nail=good

[@Conn30Mtenor]

Close... For want of a horse, the rider was lost For want of a rider, the message was lost For want of the message, the battle was lost

[@wadopotato33]

Excellent quote.

[@angelitopapa89]

Correct

[@wadopotato33]

@@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.

[@Igor_lvanov]

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

[@sciloj]

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.

[@pierrecurie]

@@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

[@thunderspark1536]

That's one reason why young, smart people are leaving Russia overall, better opertunities elsewhere.

[@s3m4jno5w4d]

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

[@s3m4jno5w4d]

To your second point, you can only effectively affect change from within, however distasteful that may be

[@chipparker3950]

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?"

[@gamingforever9121]

Lol based supply officer

[@sudazima]

made me spill my morning yoghurt lol

[@YoonbeenPark]

Love how I can hear him say "Suh" and "heuh". Reminds me of Master Sergeant Farrell from Edge of Tomorrow lol.

[@WillHayes44]

In the most humorous way, western military anti-corruption broken down. Great anecdote.

[@miguelservetus9534]

Could you help me understand this story? Was the request for field jackets not allowed? Was the supply sergeant breaking the rules?

[@Armoredcompany]

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.

[@markmpm]

Oh, that is so funny!

[@WendyStringer48088]

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.

[@youarewrong5523]

You’re an under-appreciated badass thank you for everything you have done and continue to do. I wish you good luck and safely bro

[@Cincy32]

US military is compromised.

[@Armoredcompany]

@@Cincy32 in what way?

[@northerncaptain855]

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.

[@PerunAU]

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.

[@משה-ב1ט]

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.

[@goranvujnovic597]

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.

[@TheDoctorGnome]

@@goranvujnovic597 would it be, no matter how little they pay me I can work less.

[@AndreaDavidEdelman]

As I remember it the pay was great but there was nothing to buy

[@matthill1037]

New slideshow dropped, LET'S GO!

[@pougetguillaume4632]

Video essay is temporary, power point presentation is eternal \o/

[@karsjansen5481]

This is exactly what I thought the moment I saw this video

[@Ben.....]

LETS GO!!!

[@LuvLikeTruck]

Never has the internet been so excited for power point

[@jasonlast7091]

All hale the slide show

[@BraindeadCRY]

The idea of some grunt making 100$ off of some tire replacements sold off costing the government a 5million$ vehicle is honestly kind of scary. Petty theft can have insanely high costs

[@stttttipa]

Oh indeed. My friend worked at a company where he was told as a shift manager that stealing tools is kinda fine, but do not mess with the product at any cost or the whole team will be fired on the spot and sued. Why... well, for taking material for pocket change they would amass penalties for when the machines didn't work and those penalties could amount to tens of thousands of dollars per week. One positive thing was also the incentive to pay workers more.

[@outinthesticks1035]

If a person is poorly paid and they want to supplement to equal the wage . They could likely sell for about 10% of new value , so they need about ten times their wage in face value . And then there is the cost of not having it when needed , priority transport to where it's needed , possibly higher cost to procure when the supplier knows it's needed right now , could add up to double the $ of what " disappeared "

[@Itried20takennames]

@@outinthesticks1035 it is the old “tragedy of the commons” where villages used to have a communal grass field where everyone can graze their live stock for free, BUT only if everyone doesn’t overuse it as free feed. And of course, most people thought “yeah, we should only use it as a backup and if needed, but it’s okay if I do it a little, so long as others don’t.” Then it turns into a dirt patch after it was over-grazed by everyone cheating “a little.”

[@outinthesticks1035]

@@Itried20takennames I just watched a video of the difficulty of "regreening" areas in middle east and north Africa. Some of it is same problem . Everyone wants as more livestock than their neighbors . Areas close to villages get grazed every day as cattle go out and better grass gets killed. Livestock owners want to care for cattle but the land doesn't belong to them so they try to use it up before neighbors do . Trees get planted but get cut for firewood before they can mature and make seed for new trees . Some success stories are heard but it's only if their leader can enforce some regulations. And then they need to be able to keep others from coming in and using up resources

[@paulmahoney7619]

@@Itried20takennames interestingly enough, most commons systems had communal structures to ensure everyone could graze enough to survive but not so much it would deplete the commons. When they were privatized, owners who wanted to squeeze every cent out of them wound up overgrazing

[@SteveRichfield]

There is a principle used by many corporations that short-circuits corruption. All employees are each one of 3 types of people: 1. Accountants, that are PROHIBITED from touching any of the physical stuff. 2. Ordinary personnel who use the physical stuff, but are PROHIBITED from accessing the accounting papers. 3. Decision makers, who are PROHIBITED from touching either the physical stuff or the accounting papers. Once when I was working at a corporation like this - a large medical clinic, the business manager married the head cashier. I objected and pointed out that one of them needed to find another job. I was overruled, and a few months later a MAJOR embezzlement was discovered with them working together.

[@cat-.-]

But no one said that the accountant's butler's liaison's nephew cannot be a decision maker who's college buddy handles the equipment

[@georgegonzalez2476]

There was a lady in the accounting department of the city of Marion, Ohio who embezzled like $14 million over like 20 years. Weird thing was she freely spent the money and had many Cadillacs and show horses and a big house and very fancy clothes and nobody caught on. Maybe she told everyone she used her teabags twice?

[@dannyvalward1524]

@@georgegonzalez2476 "Told anybody she used her teabacks twice?" I laughed so hard cause it's so true 😂 "Rich people know how to save money, ay?" sure Karen.

[@Knightwolf1994]

@@georgegonzalez2476 She could've laundered the money, but no, she broke the cardinal rule of criminals: Never go crazy with the loot.

[@vorynrosethorn903]

As the lottery proves many rich people are in fact rich because they are wise about what they waste their money on, but corruption is unfortunately far more widespread than is commonly acknowledged and it is becoming increasingly apparent that western governments are very corrupt but quite good at obfuscating that fact as well as stopping traditional corruption from spreading to the lower levels, though at least in the UK even this is changing.

[@233DDR]

Never thought I’d be excited for a 1 hr PowerPoint presentation, but I’ve been proven wrong. Great as usual.

[@larsp.8905]

never thought that i be waiting for one (at my own will)

[@dawnmoriarty9347]

I went yay! when I saw there was a new Perun presentation

[@RaDeus87]

Luetin and Arch have prepared me for this, I think 30 minutes is a middle-length video these days 😅

[@Megalomaniakaal]

never say never

[@fossils-z9d]

@@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

[@sarakajira]

It's funny, before the invasion of Ukraine, I remember seeing a lot of KZbin 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

[@tamlandipper29]

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.

[@RainingBullets]

@@tamlandipper29 Did you get them out on a tray?

[@garthy4u]

@@RainingBullets underrated joke right here 😂😂

[@mrvwbug4423]

Same reason why American firearm KZbinrs 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.

[@mediawarrior5957]

MREinfo did a review of one of them and called it "food from the middle ages"

[@499PUCK]

I attended a briefing about the Russian military. They gave us information that we all thought was crazy. Little did we know it was pretty spot on. There was also a book written about the Russian air force by a Mig pilot defector. The lesson to me is when you treat the people at the bottom like crap it’s just a matter of time before the organisation goes down the drain.

[@jeffreyskoritowski4114]

Mig Pilot by Victor Belenko.

[@kriegdeathrider7805]

Ground crews used to drink jet coolant because it was ethanol based, the boot Polish they used to issue also ethanol based they'd eat that one my smearing it on a slice of bread till it soaked through toasted scraped all the black crust off since that was the stuff that would probably kill you then eat the alcoholic toast

[@monaliza3334]

So how's your Pentagon corruption? They are stealing trillions from taxpayers, your veterans doesn't have proper medical insurance and you dare talking abouts Russia 😂😂😂 Clean up your proxy mess around the world.

[@ComradeOgilvy1984]

When you treat people at the bottom like crap, they do not expect competence and hard work to be rewarded. They quickly realize that any notable bravery by the unit under fire will result in a captain or lieutenant with family connections up the chain of command taking credit and getting a promotion. If anyone writes up a report about how the mandatory field training for the tank crews or artillery crews never occurred that year because of missing fuel, someone with connections will make an example of that person.

[@dannyzero692]

@@jeffreyskoritowski4114 Is that the same guy who stole a Mig-25 and fled to Japan?

[@theaninova]

Loved the story by my dad serving in the east German army. Whenever he entered a soviet military building, there weren't even any lightbulbs installed because they had been stolen somewhere down the line.

[@JohnSmith-yv6eq]

They weren't really bright sparks eh?

[@majk5995]

My grandpa served in the polish military during the cold war and he told me some funny stories too. One time he bought a canister of fuel from the russians and when he opened it it turned out to be mostly water with only a little bit of gasoline to not make it obvious.

[@DogeickBateman]

@@JohnSmith-yv6eq Gave me a good chuckle.

[@ApusApus]

My father was serving in a USSR (training?) radar station, and the bribe of choise for friends and superiors was matched transistor pairs for home music systems. Of course, also the alcohol rations for the servicing of a wide variety of technological devices that existed only on the relevant papers for this ration for the past 30 years. Mid 70s to early 80s.

[@veramae4098]

The reunited Germany has barely talked about it, but incorporating east Germany into the union has been really hard ... because this culture became embedded in east Germans.

[@georgegonzalez2476]

A family story: my grandfather was an officer in the Italian army in WW1. His superior officer ordered him to sign a document stating that a supply ship full of food never arrived and presumed sunk. Grandpa knew that the ship had actually been redirected to another port and the food had been sold. He refused to sign that document and for months had to sleep with one eye open and rifle in the bed as he was in danger of being killed.

[@christiandauz3742]

No wonder Italy suck in both World Wars!

[@ender3530]

@@christiandauz3742 Yeah we had A LOT of problems in both wars

[@ehayes7849]

thank you - wishing you many more years of a wonderful life's journey.

[@christiandauz3742]

@@ender3530 Wish a Time-traveler Industrialized and Secularized Ancient Etruscans

[@davethebrahman9870]

Brave man.

[@truthsmiles]

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.

[@meikala2114]

the number pf cars burnt after a stolen ride tp destroy DNA evidence... a ride that might cost 50 bucks is incredible

[@nothuman3083]

In America you pay someone 5 dollars per theif caught, or you shoot them and leave them outside on the street.

[@iroll]

By corruption you meant the scrap yard looking the other way? Or are you just talking about theft?

[@wow50000]

@@iroll hes talking about the theft

[@iroll]

@@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.

[@randallreed9048]

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!

[@monaliza3334]

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...😂...

[@lorenzooliveira1157]

Damn, on an individual level the theft is minimal but adding it up it gets ridiculous!

[@tarmbruster1]

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

[@apergiel]

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.

[@louisvaught2495]

Perun honestly makes better military training videos than the military.

[@MrJdsenior]

@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.

[@josephryan9230]

@@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.

[@ethanmckinney203]

@@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.

[@j.f.fisher5318]

I've been hoping this lights a fire under Western governments to systemically fight corruption and white collar crime.

[@bernadmanny]

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.

[@ethanmitchinson7861]

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.

[@rcm89304]

Kleptovich gave me a good laugh

[@CCumva]

Dislike bad, support good. Nice position! 👍🏻

[@maninblack6400]

@@rcm89304 In Ukraine we call them Praporshchik Spizdyaev. "Spizdit" is a curse word for stealing something.

[@МаксКуржумов]

@@maninblack6400 spizding is a national sport in ex-Soviet countries and also in China and Africa.

[@roryschussler]

One other minor "benefit" of corruption is that it makes it easier to run a police state where everyone is afraid to challenge you. Set up a system where everyone has to break the law if they want to advance and don't want to live in poverty. Then punish ONLY the people who are a threat to you. Everyone remaining is loyal, because they know you could instantly arrest them for corruption the moment you feel like it.

[@uncletimo6059]

yes, anarcho-tyranny you just described it

[@PerunAU]

And it theoretically makes political purges a source of positive public opinion, because you can now label your purge as an 'anti-corruption' effort. And, to be fair, the people you are arresting and purging in this hypothetical ARE crooks...it's just that you're only arresting them because of some reason unrelated to them being crooks. Arresting crooks is generally a pretty popular thing to do, so a Government that finds its power under threat can remove opponents and shore up public opinion in one move, theoretically.

[@KnightsWithoutATable]

This is exactly how Putin has retained a lot of his power. I also see the CCP in China doing the same thing. It also has the added benefit that political ambition can be tempered by changing the focus to extending one's network and schemes to acquire money instead of needing the gain political power to achieve higher levels of income.

[@andygall2086]

I think you just described the Chinese Communist Party!

[@hkchan1339]

Other than the minor problem that your army can't win a war. It's a great way to reward your supporters and stay in power. Good at fighting internal threats, sucks at external threats

[@welcome741]

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.

[@paulmahoney7619]

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.

[@gibbcharron3469]

Yeah, "shrinkage" exists in the retail world too, which accounts for everything from lost shipments to shoplifting.

[@olegverzhinsky6450]

My colonel called lost equipment or supplies “ the cost of doing business “.

[@damonedrington3453]

Allowing a small range for theft and loss is standard. Every grocery store works their budget on the exact same assumption.

[@SteamCheese1]

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.😂

[@-C0mr4d3_C0VID]

Former US military here. I never thought I’d find a power point presentation so enthralling and actually informative. Thank you again!

[@Terry-dl4nf]

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.

[@Terry-dl4nf]

@@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.

[@davidballantyne4492]

It should be noted that your "20% of the Russian defense budget is stolen" is from 2011, under the previous defense minister who had put in sweeping anti-corruption reforms. He was booted and Shoigu was installed in late 2012 because everyone wanted more corruption, so the situation from 2013 on HAS to be worse than 20% stolen.

[@Misha-dr9rh]

@John Grigg I'd reckon it's at least a half.

[@e.l.4409]

2/3rds.

[@e.l.4409]

Didn't the guy handling the maintenance budget of the Moskva steal 70% of it?

[@DogeickBateman]

@@e.l.4409 I'm sorry *What*

[@e.l.4409]

@@DogeickBateman I was close. The company that won a tender to upgrade the missile systems of the Moskva for 1 billion rubles stole about 70% of the money, and almost nothing got done. But I'm sure a heap of the maintenance of budget went to find construction of someone's summer dacha.

[@scottdrobbins]

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.

[@simontmn]

The Deep State needs to hire Perun, Stat!

[@Weedsethesecond]

Totally agree and very aptly put. Well done!

[@nerrler5574]

can't wait on his video about US military corruption

[@lorddrake2418]

Excellent video agreed. It is such a pleasure to enjoy & absorb something so well structured and present. A fine achievement indeed.

[@donnyzavicci8121]

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.

[@teddys5775]

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

[@stitch77100]

Unalived ?

[@teddys5775]

@@stitch77100 habit of trying to avoid filters

[@stitch77100]

@@teddys5775 Oh I forgot about those. Thank you for the explanation

[@consumerofbepsi5254]

Rookie mistake, everyone knows to go for house-wall copper

[@damonedrington3453]

@@stitch77100 you know how like, your heart is beating and your brain is on? Yea the meth head is the opposite

[@Perkelenaattori]

One of the funniest clips I've seen during this war was an Ukrainian soldier opening two captured dynamite boxes and turned out that there was no dynamite inside but two blocks of wood instead. A masterclass in corruption.

[@martins.4240]

Reminds me of those reactive armor panels on the Russian T-72's that turned out to contain cardboard instead of explosives.

[@Perkelenaattori]

@@martins.4240 That one I haven't seen. I've seen them contain sand though.

[@nicolaszan1845]

@@Perkelenaattori The armor one is pretty famous. It contained egg cartons instead of actual reactive armor. Another famous example is the sight of Russian armor being a thick slab of actual armor covering part of the chest, and the rest allegedly being covered and supplemented with layers of cardboard.

[@PerfectDeath4]

@@martins.4240 so the cardboard is supposed to be there by design, they are shaped kind of like egg cartons in order to hold the reactive plates far enough apart and at an angle for greater effect, these are metal plates with a layer of explosive to push/destroy incoming projectiles away... However, the reactive plates in-between the "cardboard" spacers were all missing in some of these pictures and we see other pictures of saggy bags that should be firm and square when loaded with the RA plates. Similar stories go around of these reactive armor plates being sold during the Chechen wars.

[@johnathanhughes9881]

Similarly, the Russian drone which, when opened, turned out to have a perfectly functional Canon camera! This isn't objectively a bad way to do things, but if you're paying $100,000 US for this thing . . . .

[@shawn576]

You're right about theft having a much higher cost than what the thief gains. I do electrical work, and crackheads will do $10,000 of damage to steal $100 worth of scrap copper. Just imagine how much damage you can do to a fighter jet by removing $100 worth of stuff.

[@Swingmesideways]

I am a constructionworker and we got same problem. Crackheads rip a sheat of coppar from a church wall worth 10 usd, cost 2000 usd to repair it.

[@JohnSmith-gd2fg]

@@Swingmesideways I'm an Architect, and I'm amazed when (on projects) Contractors they say they've been ripped off. Margins are so low that lax security can turn a small profit into a massive loss, when theft of materials happens. It also leads to delays which risks claims, and of course prolongation is itself a potential significant cost as well.

[@MrJocko111]

I work at the danish courts and I've seen a crackhead break an 800 $ door at a hotel to steal a cheap room thermometer and a lampshade 😂

[@kwzieleniewski]

I've heard of a case when thieves stole 10 m of copper cable from railway signaling on the busisiest of mainlines. Noone was hurt, but thousands of people experienced say an hour of delay each. And 10 m of cable probably doesn't weigh even 1 kg, can't be worth more than a beer or vodka at most.

[@PerunAU]

I really do wonder about what buyers must think when some random person turns up with a few lengths of copper pipe or wire, still partly covered in dust or plaster or whatnot, and asks to sell.

[@skyblueo]

I have known many Russians who've moved to New York and to the last person they all talk about corruption and bribery as being part of daily life in Russia. They view it as endemic, and they have a profoundly cynical view of life in Russia. So it came as no surprise to these expats that the Russian army was a Potemkin village. These conversations have left me feeling rather hopeless for the future of Russia, and I can only see their influence on the world stage as a negative one for the foreseeable future. Their corruption has a worldwide negative effect that goes beyond their boarders in Europe and even effects lives in the global South. This is no time for schadenfreude.

[@clairenollet2389]

There was a MiG pilot who defected in the 1980s, and he wrote a book about why he defected. One of the reasons he left was because of all the corruption. One of the things that made his defection so hard was the lack of fuel at his base. The pilots hardly ever got to make training flights, because they had to conserve fuel. He had to plan his trip to burn as little fuel as possible on his way to Japan, the closest non-Communist country. He just barely made it to freedom; his plane was breathing fumes by the time he arrived. While he was being debriefed in the USA, one of his handlers took him out, and let him drive a fast car. The pilot was delighted with the car, and started speeding. He got pulled over by the cops. The pilot turned to his handler and said, "I know how to handle this," and he reached into his pocket to pull out his wallet and offer the cop a cash bribe. The handler stopped him, and said, "That does work on some American police, but most of them will arrest you for attempted bribery. Put the wallet away right now."

[@botondhetyey159]

It's everywhere in the ex-sovuet block as well. Ask any Hungarian about getting a driver's license, we'll tell you that you either calculate in a bribe to the guy conducting the exam, or flip a coin for whether you pass, even if you drive perfectly. One of my friends failed twice on the same road - one time he was like 3-5 km/h above the speed limit, (on a road where everyone is 15-20 above) the next time he was told that by slow driving he put the other drivers in danger.

[@thegoodcalavera]

Honestly, it’s a major reason why we should be seeking to end Russia’s influence entirely; its corruption is so endemic - and arguably foundational - that it thoroughly pervades state policy in a manner that negatively affects the entire world.

[@johndominicamabile]

A few years ago my boss (a US army logistics officer) planned a trip to a small isolated area. At the same time a team of auditors was coming to our large base to look over some of our records. He knew if anything bad was found it would look really suspect that he was far away with bad communications. He cancelled his trip and spent that time with the inspection team (they found some paperwork errors his predeccessor had made). I'm sure in a corrupt military he would have been in the desert shouting 'what I can't hear you' into his radio.

[@mandelorean6243]

Great anecdotal story... Good example. Thx

[@tomaszprzetacznik7802]

Maybe you know why USA pays for Army and Air Force while its so called Navy with Marine Corps duplicates most of capabilities of first two. Navy with Marine Corps has own separate air force and infantry. And what dictates when Marines and when Army are used?

[@DFPFilms1]

@@tomaszprzetacznik7802 different jobs. To VESTLY oversimplify things, the air force’s job is to put “warheads on foreheads”, while the army uses aircraft for troop movement and medical purposes, the navy uses aircraft for reconnaissance and to protect (and strike) ships. There’s lots of overlap but the US heavily values air superiority. The United States Air Force is the largest Air Force in the world. The second largest Air Force in the world…. is the United States Navy.

[@mikejozefowicz888]

I was in the Corps. We operated on such a tight budget, if anything came up missing, it was immediately noticed.

[@jzdude01]

@@tomaszprzetacznik7802Many things wrong with this comment. Firstly you named four of the five branches of the US military. Each branch has different doctrine they operate of to achieve the objectives of the joint military command. You say the navy and marines do the same as the army and the Air Force yet this is insanely untrue. Firstly you just seem to forget that like, the oceans (those things that make up 70% of our planet) just, exist. And that the navy is designed to control those areas, which no other branch comes even close to being able to do. Marines are an amphibious attack force, and also an expeditionary force. If you need to send in a small group to capture a strategic target to set up for larger force staging (the army), you send marines. Marines can also be sent see for expeditionary missions such as rapid emergency humanitarian aid deployments. Basically, you need to have a force that is ready to quickly be able to move to a new target area? Marines have the best equipment, training, logistics, and overall doctrine for that. The army is a ground based infantry force. It is best used in large numbers pushing together and holding ground. You won’t want to send an army battalion to rapidly take a strategic objective because they’re doctrine is not centered around that, the marines are. And the Air Force serves multiple different domains, first and for most they are the main players in the strategic nuclear command. They keep ships with nukes ready at all times. Asides from that, and that the navy also contributes to strafe nuclear command by keeping strategic nuclear subs operating at all times, the Air Force has other roles too. They’re meant for air dominance and support they have vehicles and training and doctrine best suited for establishing air superiority, fighting for air superiority, and maintaining air superiority. Along with also being available for air reinforcement to the other branches. The reason the army has aircraft is directly for infantry support. You will not see the army fighters often being used to keep enemy fighters from binning you, instead they will be helping on the ground forces with tactical needs. That’s a big difference, Air Force more strategic doctrine, army more tactical. So training and equipment for air craft will differ bc of that. For the navy, when operating at sea, with air power being incredibly import for naval control if they’re in the middle of god knows where on the ocean, they need to have rapid air support to secure naval dominance. This is something the Air Force can not provide since the time it would take for them to scramble jets from their air base and send them to the naval battle (if they can even reach) would take so long the battle might be lost by the time they get there. Having such a strong naval Air Force also allows the navy to provide greater assistance to rapid military operations. You can in many different scenarios park an aircraft carrier much closer to a battle zone than an air base can be established (or is established). So this means if the marines (who also operate a large Air Force of their own for this same reason - because it’s part of their doctrine to best achieve what they’re designed for) or the army are engaging in an invasion or campaign, they can receive air support much sooner than from the Air Force, especially if the army has not yet been able to establish an operational air base for their support craft to take off from. And this is with me leaving out stuff lmao! TLDR is Jesus Christ the branches all have different purposes and are all used together by joint strategic command to achieve command and mission objectives. PS: It goes with the overall US military doctrine to be as efficient, and effective as possible with as few lives lost. This idea leads down to specialization being a fundamental tenant of the military. This is why they have multiple branches, each has their own specialization so that they are most effective at doing their tasks and can accomplish their tasks while minimizing costs and loss of life.

[@denmikseb]

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]

Brasil IRS agents had a system where they got a cut from fines and penalties they enforced. They were ruthless.

[@ricardokowalski1579]

@@rottingravensblood9106 no different than sales on comission 😁

[@jcs0984]

@@rottingravensblood9106 I'm not 100% certain but it seems like the IRS in the USA has a similar program, I recall learning about it in school.

[@Elenrai]

@@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!

[@SnakeWestern]

@@ricardokowalski1579 Portugal works like that as well.

[@WUZLE]

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.

[@kempana9414]

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.

[@ledichang9708]

@@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.

[@kempana9414]

@@ledichang9708 funny you bring that up, it's quite common in Korea.

[@donorbane]

Exactly that.

[@visageliquifier3636]

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.

[@dorzhimunkuev3959]

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.

[@serhiy-serhiiv]

He's from Australia with Croatian heritage

[@monaliza3334]

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 😮

[@paulmahoney7619]

@@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?

[@gow1044]

Are you sure? I would think some of the newer missiles like iskandar from The early 2000s would be new?

[@belajasmert]

I particularly liked how you breakdown the accumulating effect as corruption goes down the food chain and the insight that the low-level personnel corruption may have the most *direct* effect on the military performance.

[@williamnichols539]

That a load of crap. It's the complete opposite, you lead by example. Corruption at the top has the most direct effect on the military performance. If you Assassinate the commander and cheif of the military like Kennedy you lose wars like Vietnam.

[@toniwilson6210]

They might have the biggest impact on the bottom line, but I think you will find that the root cause of corruption is culturally related.

[@colinl2908]

I like the sloth reference. Corruption can be as simple as a boss taking longer lunches or being late to work everyday, which employees then begin to mimic and push the boundaries. Great video and makes perfect sense.

[@veramae4098]

Anecdote on YT: Owner of company grumpily complains to journalist "I'm so tired of employees just putting out the minimum effort. Nobody takes any pride in their work." Journalist "How much do you pay?" Long pause. Owner "Minimum wage." Uh huh.

[@sleeplessdev7204]

​@@veramae4098 I see your point to a certain degree - but at the same time, there's nothing wrong with expecting a modicum of effort from paid employees, as long as they aren't being exploited. This cultural precept of taking pride in one's work does indeed seem to be fading, in general. Take a look at the Japanese manufacturing industry to see what a culture of pride in one's work can accomplish.

[@oscaranderson5719]

@@sleeplessdev7204 have you ever walked into a restaurant with a “now hiring” sign and two servers trying to bus way too many tables? that’s because everyone with a self-preservation instinct left last week.

[@oscaranderson5719]

I really like it ‘cuz as a writer I see people keep saying “well the bad guy does things more efficiently.” yet here we are.

[@baneofbanes]

@@sleeplessdev7204 you get what you pay for

[@MrFreddiii]

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.

[@ivansmirnov7342]

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.

[@IncognitoAtreides]

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.

[@Gunni1972]

Are you admitting Russia is a democracy?

[@Eskon2]

There is a nice movie about developing the Bradley, Some countries are so democratic all that bureaucracy sticks, and they got paid good salaries.

[@egoalter1276]

Pentagon wars is a bag of lies.

[@paulmahoney7619]

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.

[@abdurrehmannasir5963]

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.

[@Primitarian]

What a fascinating paradox that this video brings out brilliantly: How a society that appears outwardly to be tough, stern, and disciplined (and even in reality is just so toward the general population) tends in practice to be weak, corrupt and disheveled, to an embarrassing degree, so much so that an opponent which appear outwardly to be soft, indulgent and coddled--e.g., the Western world--often runs circles around them. And ultimately the reason is simple: too much power consolidated in and safeguarded for too few hands.

[@mst7155]

To Christopher: I share the same understanding and feelings: the tough,stern,disciplined looking Russian army may be a paper tiger in reality because of corruption.

[@MrKotBonifacy]

There's this Russian word, "показуха" (pokazuha), which is something like a "show-off on steroids cum total window dressing". (See also "Potemkin village".) "Appearance is a half of success", and in Russia sometimes it's the entire success ;-) This is pretty much a hollowed-out "society", albeit one should not see it as "society" in the Western sense of this word - more like "ethnos" (from "ethnicity") or "disjoined populace". It was never a proper society, even back then under Tzar, and after Bolshevik Revolution they destroyed all social bonds and trust that was there (Pavlik Morozov is the most glaring example of how Bolsheviks turned all societal relation upside down.) For decades and generations they had to clap hands on The Party meetings, praise the leadership and all, even though they knew perfectly well they live in shit, and the only way to really make any money is to "organise" things and stuff from your workplace and then exchange it for what you need with your neighbour or relative. Bribe higher up officials, expect "взятки: (vzyatki, bribes) from people "underneath" you... Just now I recollect one story some Russian fellow told me quite some time ago - he was driving and got stopped by traffic police "for a check". "What you normally do", he explained to me, "you place (i.e. "conceal") a 100 rouble bill in your car registration document and hand it, when requested, to the officer. After which you're asked few standard questions, there'll be some "checks" (so the pretence is maintained), then you are handed back your 'papers' (minus the R100 bill). and you're waved off". Still, for some reason that guy felt tad mischievous that day and decided to pull that cop's legs a little. He knew his car was fresh after roadworthiness inspection, with a squeaky clean bill of health, he himself is as sober as newborn baby, so there's nothing he could be fined for. So he handed the "papers" to the cop, without the "customary enhancement". That cop opened it, and... frowned. And then it stared - sobriety check, tyres condition, lights, fire extinguisher, and what not. But he (the cop) couldn't find any fault whatsoever, and stood there for a while, thinking hard, and then... "Why you're so unshaven, eh?" "Here's your hundred, you truly earned it. Now gimme my papers back and bye" went the reply... But I digress here, and anyway the "outward appearance" is just that - there's this "official reality" and "real reality". In the former one you are doing your best to "not to be seen" ("the first principle of not being seen - not to stand up"), in the latter one you "ride quietly" (тише едешь дальше будешь - the quieter you go, the further you'll get) and are on a lookout on how to немножко прихватить (to grab a little). "The common good/ wealth/ property" belongs to a "Dictionary of Very Foreign Words", best suited for naive suckers. Even that Russian Orthodox Church is in fact made of Bolsheviks-appointed imposters (and their "heirs") - see "heresy of sergianism". In short, the true and original Patriarchate was basically killed off by Lenin and Stalin - but when Nazis invaded Bolsheviks (or "The Great Patriotic War" begun - another historical lie, same as callong Nazis "Fascist") and the Great Invincible Army went into a total disarray (I wonder why...) Stalin needed some "скрепу" (skryepa - brace, buckle, clip) under which he could rally his cannon fodder against his "eternal, from time immemorial, arch enemy" (i.e. Fascist, not to be confused with Nazis, yesterday's best friends ever), so he placed his bet on that "opium for the masses" (copyright Comrade Lenin). Why on that hated (by Bolsheviks) religion? Becaouse communism was hated by everyone else, that's why... So he (Stalin) took that low ranking, weak and feeble priest under the name of Sergey, and told him: from now on, you're the head of the Russian Orthodox Church! That's an order, now go and fulfil it! Understood?" Of course, not everyone in Russia is like that corrupt through and through. ("Eighty percent of Russians support Putin - and 20% don't drink anymore".) I'm generalising here, but the fact that Russian "folk-hood" is atomised and most people are just on a lookout to "get" whatever they can, by hook or by crook, is pretty much true. Just few days ago I came across the information that a certain group of wives of those "washing machine and TV sets" stealing "soldiers" set up some grass-root co-operative to sell whatever of those spoils they don't need for themselves (and split the proceedings among themselves), but pretty soon the whole "enterprise" turned sour, as they started to steal among themselves... Can somebody tell me why I am not surprised...? PS: One thing, however, should be kept in mind - "They are never as strong as they portray themselves, but neither as week as they might appear". Some learned it the hard way - and the thing is they can take much more "beating" (and endure it) than most Westerners could even imagine.

[@Primitarian]

@@MrKotBonifacy I don't think this is just a Russian thing (though I do see it as pathology that has infected the Russian soul deeply). When I was in the US Navy, I received a lecture from another officer that one should never report problems to the skipper, just suck it up and tell him, "Yes, sir," or "We got it covered, sir" (even if that is not necessarily true!) Then, there is a President who said filing for bankruptcy multiple times and evading taxes just showed he was smart--I can see why he and Mr. Putin would get along so well.

[@MrKotBonifacy]

@@Primitarian That "Navy thing" might be present "in the navy and elsewhere" (false sense of a collective and its interest(s), or a false sense of group loyalty), but I don't think this is THE foundation of western society "by and large". Taking unfair advantage at the expense of everyone else's seems indeed to be a well entrenched and somewhat beneficiary evolutionary trait (that is, beneficial for the individual, in the short therm - and detrimental to the society as a whole - aka "tragedy of the commons") - so "no surprise" here. But then (and because of it) we have the civilisation and its norms ("thou shall not steal, thou shall lie not, thou shall not covet thy neighbour's wife - and neither his bling-blings") so we could function as a coherent, productive and somewhat "harmonious" society - despite of our "basic instincts". Still I do not really know the details of tax returns of... lemme guess, that 'orrible president all modern and progressive folks just love to hate, eh? And also, I think the rumours about the extremely satisfying, erm... cohabitation between those two are greatly exaggerated, as it was Trump who told them Krauters "shut the... pipe up! - and start spending some money on the weapons at least, will ya?!" So, AFAIK, he rather ruffled Vladimir Vladimirovich and rubbed him the wrong (i.e. right) way, really hard - and the champagne corks popped in Kremlin only after Trump lost, but then again... But then again I might be just wrong, who knows. Still, Sleepy Joe was, how shall I put it... a tad "sleepy" (and blind) when it came to the Russian build-up, so... Well, we all can see what's happening now, don't we? But I digress here, and at any rate there's a substantial (IMHO) difference between "navy things" happening every now and then, and that "quite another level of development" - like those high ranking "field" officers selling ammo and weapons to Taliban (Soviets in Afghanistan), or that top brass guy who stole most of the money meant for the upgrade of cruiser "Moskva" (and a pretty penny it was, pretty indeed), or even that lesser know entrepreneurial army fellow, who sold most of whatever he could (including entire engines) from the tanks he was supposed to look after in the warehouse - so when the call came (darn, who would ever thought?!) to "get them ready for action and send them to the front units" he took out the gun, take a good aim, and shoot himself... no, not in the foot. He missed, by about 5'8", upwards. Anyway, "down there" it's the way of life. Corrupt officials can be found everywhere, even in places like Singapore - still, it's a far cry from places like India or Indonesia, where bribery is the norm and way of life rather than exception and occasional canker on otherwise perfectly healthy and shiny arse. Annoying and uncomfortable to sit, but "I'll manage it". But... Hey, wait a minute... Why am I typing so much here? "nuff of this blabber, bye - and kindly pls disregard it, or (better still) do not read it at all.. What?! Too late? I should have told it earlier, right at the beginning? "Better late then never", as my Grandma used to say whenever she was late for a train... Cheers! ;-)

[@Primitarian]

​@The Front And some people think that's all you need to do, just keep up appearances because perception is reality (as one politician told me), and if you believe something strongly enough, it becomes true. Except that this doesn't have to happen at all. There is something called reality, and it can catch up with you, as has been happening to Russia for months.

[@CapnDan57]

The more I digest this analysis, the more I realize that this endemic corruption is throughout Russian society and explains why their perception of reality is so upside down. Everyone lies about everything.

[@gondolacrescent5]

The world corruption perception index places Ukraine slightly less corrupt than Russia. Ukraine and Russia are among the most corrupt nations in Europe- but Western press doesn’t wish to draw attention to the fact $40 Billion USD is being pumped into Ukraine this year by the U.S. alone.

[@SuperPhexx]

Theyve been reduced to a dog eats dog society...

[@stockscareful6368]

Decades of communism. I grew up in a communist country. If something belongs to the state it belongs to nobody.

[@patriciusvunkempen102]

dude politicians in the west are now telling people men in dresses are women.

[@shooter7a]

@̐ elaborate.

[@FourAfterMidnight]

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.

[@ango586]

And most corrupt country is usa..

[@kekistanimememan170]

@@joaocosta3374 ez to tell others to do what you haven’t.

[@zurabsiradze7822]

@@kekistanimememan170 Right?

[@jantriska1966]

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.

[@wafudave6041]

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.

[@georgerobert4709]

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 !"

[@monaliza3334]

Look at your Pentagon corruption and your poor veterans suicide. Then you can talk about Russians....

[@zephyrback5093]

Congrats on the Sponsorship Perun, you’re finally getting the recognition you deserve!

[@billdevitt4324]

Hear Hear! 👏👏👏👏👏☺

[@casbot71]

And it's not Raid Shadowlegends or World of Tanks (which was hosted in Belarus till recently!).

[@AWMJoeyjoejoe]

I know right? Normally when youtubers announce a sponsor I just groan and skip it. This time I genuinely thought "good for you Perun. You deserve it."

[@FerdoFulgosi]

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. :)

[@sillysad3198]

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

[@gerryburde5663]

@@joaocosta3374 why don't you go there and fight for it, then?

[@vincaxtc1]

Im from Zagreb, Croatia and this is a lie 😜

[@FerdoFulgosi]

@@vincaxtc1 you from ruling party?

[@FerdoFulgosi]

@@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.

[@DerpyDaringDitzyDoo]

Your example about the body armor is frighteningly accurate really, if you know the story behind the new US Enhanced Performance Round for .556. There really is a trend of Russia claiming to have some capability, the NATO spending tons of money to counter that capability, just for it to come out Russia in no way had that capability. But it's still not to Russia's benefit, because it just means they get left farther and farther behind in arms and armor.

[@RaptorJesus]

The best example has to be the Mig-25, which resulted in the F-15.

[@mercb3ast]

@@RaptorJesus The Mig-25 is still an extremely useful and capable aircraft for Russia. The F-15 is becoming obsolete in an increasingly 4.5 to 5th gen world. The Mig-25 does things, and has capabilities that the F-15 doesn't have. The F-15 was developed because the West thought the Mig-25 was something it was not, and it addressed the wrong capabilities. You're right, the F-15 became the dominant air superiority fighter of the era because of this, and what role Russsia/the USSR played in this is debatable. The primary role of the Mig-25 is as a high altitude air controller. It flies at an altitude and at a speed that makes it basically unkillable for just about anything flying. It's roll, is to use its big ole radar, to act as a weapon guidance pod for everyone else in the immediate area. It will remain effective in this role for as long as Russia fields 4th Gen aircraft as part of its IADS. The problem a lot of people have is, they don't really understand doctrinal differences between East and West, or specifically, NATO and Soviet doctrine. The Soviets engaged in a lot of hi-lo mixing. This was because they built their army to fight WW3 with an emphasis on mass. The idea here is that the Soviets expected loss rates to be so high on both sides, that the side that had easier to produce shit that was good enough, would drown the other, ala WW2. Which both the W.Allies, and the Soviets utilized to victory. The roll of the Mig-25 and later 31 here, was the high tech side of the coin versus the low tech side. If you have Mig-25s and Mig-31s flying at insane altitudes, at speeds nothing else can approach, and they are using their advanced radars to slave the targeting systems of the Mig-23s and Mig-27s and Mig-29s etc, suddenly you have BVR capabilities on aircraft that can be produced in enormous quantities. Who wins in a BVR stand off between 20 Mig 23s and 10 F-15s? When the 20 Mig 23s are firing missiles guided by a Mig-25 that the 10 F-15s can't hope to reach? The F-15s might very well win this exchange, but the question is, did they do it economically? The Mig 23s are expendable, easily replaced. The Migs are costing 3-4x less than that F-15. However, they are also easier to produce due to just being less sophisticate machines. The Mig-25 and Mig-31 effectively turned these lower tech aircraft into little more than platforms to haul weapons around for the Foxbat and Foxhounds. Mig-25s and Mig-31s still do this to this day. Lot to be said for a super high altitude speed demon with a big ole fuck off radar on the front that can be used as the targeting system for every other aircraft within its networking range.

[@RaptorJesus]

@@mercb3ast One, the Soviets were able to expend the manpower they did because they were being armed by America. They didn't have to worry about manufacturing nearly as much equipment(particularly supply/logistics gear), because Uncle Sam was doing it for them. Beyond that, in any modern NATO/RU air engagement, the fact of the matter is that Russia isn't just out-performed in tech. It's outnumbered, too. The largest airforce on the planet is the United States Airforce. The second is the United States Navy. Somewhere around 8 or 9 is the United States Marines. And that isn't counting the rest of the NATO air arms.

[@kaptainkaos1202]

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.

[@vksasdgaming9472]

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.

[@trolleriffic]

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.

[@tulipalll]

@@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.

[@GenghisX999]

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.

[@philipdepalma4672]

The problem is a corrupt system makes sure the investigators are also corrupt.

[@andreascj73]

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.

[@AliceLoverdrive]

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 knee deep in corruption, too. Also, is there any article for this story? I'm curious to read about it.

[@Arperture]

@@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.

[@RedaniaKnight-Elect]

@@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.

[@andreascj73]

@@RedaniaKnight-Elect No, its not. Keep to facts.

[@lordz00]

Jesus, I was laughing for an hour. Great one. Plus as I'm Polish, this is exactly how my grandpa said how PRL's army (Polish army under soviet rule during Warsaw Pact) would fare, noone would fight for the damned soviets so they stole as much as possible to avoid being combat-ready in case soviets tried something.

[@Internetbutthurt]

and now Poland has gone on to be even greater things being whores for the US. ppfftt.

[@PerunAU]

That's probably a level of corruption beyond even that shown here. That's the point where corruption isn't just accepted, but considered 'moral' because it's your duty to undermine the institution you're a part of. Pretty crazy to think about.

[@musictraining5071]

@@PerunAU if it's moral, it's not corruption by definition.

[@itsthisguyagain1002]

My dad was cannonier in anti aircraft unit and he described the PRL army being made of highly intelligent specialists. It seems PRL army sorted it conscripts accordingly.

[@ЕвгенийПетров-в5п]

@@PerunAU people tend to get used to love carefree lifestyle so his grandpa might have continued doing this but that's an another story, right?

[@bobdebohemian8890]

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.

[@khussainovyessil9968]

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.

[@warreneckels4945]

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.

[@TheFranchiseCA]

"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.

[@himoffthequakeroatbox4320]

@@TheFranchiseCA I remember seeing that phrase in the pike and arquebus era.

[@thatindiandude4602]

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.

[@best5345]

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"

[@wenqiweiabcd]

"Oligarkov" and "Kleptovski" are too good. Love how you insert these little quips in your serious analysis.

[@DogeickBateman]

And of course Yuri Conscriptovich, 19, hailing from a central Siberian village.

[@Lyserdigi]

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 !

[@fredskolnick1183]

Agreed!!!

[@TheReferrer72]

That's why his subscriber numbers have gone exponential!

[@Grundewalt]

i just couldn't say it better , right on spot man. Just refer him to all my buddies.

[@MarcosElMalo2]

I suspect he’s just scratching the surface of his generalist knowledge.

[@TelenTerror]

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.

[@hellfirdragon17]

Sounds like mikeburnfire

[@TelenTerror]

@@hellfirdragon17 Ah, a man of culture!

[@moritamikamikara3879]

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"

[@jan22150]

In the Russian army they try to not pay you if you are entitled to severance pay, the army will find ways to not pay you or your beneficiaries.

[@Rutherford_Inchworm_III]

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.

[@jkbeatty1]

In terms of why militaries are so vulnerable to corruption, one item not discussed was lack of market pricing information. Alot of the equipment is specialized and the antithesis of commercial off-the-shelf, which means it's harder to evaluate what the fair market price of something is. It's not like the govt can do a whole lot of comparison shopping when determining how much fixing a nuclear sub or sourcing an AMRAAM component should be. That makes it easier to inflate pricing, which means there are more economics rents at stake, some of which can be used for corrupt purposes.

[@Xezlec]

Yeah, cost-plus contracts are a nightmare for that sort of thing.

[@LetsPlayBojangles]

Competition among contracts helps to drive prices down to some extent, but there are situations where there is really only one good option and they know they can charge 200K for a rocket that costs 10k to make.

[@Ayattar55]

But sometimes you can compare them and see how much money is wasted. My personal favourite are local NOD contracts. Per-unit price can be extracted from public information regarding contract total cost and units ordered. And so, you can learn, that your government military and police are ordering nightvision monos 8,7k EUR a piece (wholesale/contract) that are performing same as civilian units that cost 4k EUR per piece (retail), and aren't even close to my unit with early 2010's secondhand military tube, originally from ANVIS6. Same goes for thermals, but at least they have a redeeming feature of having plug'n play capability when attached to AAM and ATM systems used by the army. I don't think it justifies 50% price difference though.

[@CantusTropus]

This is because you have a highly distorted market with military goods - you have far more sellers than you have customers (there is realistically only one customer for tanks, and they don't buy them with their own money).

[@sheldoniusRex]

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.

[@aspirehypnotherapyandrelat1366]

Great video. This reminds me of a story my brother who lives in Argentina sent to me. The Argentine military is as corrupt as the government and probably on a par with the Russian Miliatary. A few years ago a destroyer sank tied up to a dock in port. When they figured out what had happened, apparently there were 3 emergency water pumps that were needed to keep the destroyer afloat in case it sprung a leak. Two of them had been stolen and sold for the copper in them and the third failed when it got overloaded. End result, some sailor made a couple of hundred bucks from the pump motors that were stolen and the navy lost a destroyer worth millions. This video illustrates that entire process really well. Great job Perun

[@des12zero]

Do you happen to know the name of that battleship or the year it sank? In Google I can only find information about a battleship called "Santísima Trinidad" that sank on port, but nothing about someone that stole it's water pumps.

[@bombfog1]

As an Army officer, my greatest anxieties were always tied to my property books, and this seemed to be so for my fellow officers. The madness highlighted in this video has left me feeling queasy.

[@talltroll7092]

The Army is indeed madness... but there is (sometimes, at least) method to the madness

[@twothreefour234]

I cant even imagine that cluster of suck. Being at the mercy of that system has got to be a nightmare.

[@yellowbeard1]

@@twothreefour234 it sucks but it’s better then being at the mercy of a system where the tanks don’t work and you don’t have enough food or ammo

[@lesserlogic9977]

@@yellowbeard1 that's my worst nightmare

[@mercygal1]

I just found you today from a recommendation in the r/ukrainianconflict subreddit, and this is the third video in a row I've watched. Thank you so much for your research efforts and clear presentation style! Your content is really excellent, keep it up!

[@TheFirstHarbinger]

As an Army soldier. One of the best methods to combat corruption at the lowest level is ownership. When a vehicle is issued allow a bit of modification; let them name it and make it a home. When it breaks they go help fix it, and if that happens in the field they feel the consequences and have to walk. At that point they'll guard issued equipment like it's part of their home. In my army, low level theft will have a soldier ostracized from their peers, bullied out of the unit and in the old days viciously assaulted. Because they aren't stealing from the organisation at that point, they're stealing from their mates and violating their trust. And if you can't trust someone in barracks you sure can't trust them in combat.

[@TNothingFree]

This is very interesting what army?

[@TheFirstHarbinger]

@@TNothingFree Can't say unfortunately. Still serving and there's reasonably restrictive social media policy. What I said above doesn't mean there no lower level corruption though. People still take allowances they shouldn't or have more equipment issued than they should. The socially banned actions are messing with someone else's kit or vehicle setup. Trust is core to unit capability. You need expect that if you see someone in the same uniform you can immediately trust them them without knowing them personally, and no matter what they'd have your back. Theft degrades that trust. You hardly want to steal or ruin a piece of kit your mate may need to rely on to survive. Especially when they could be covering you.

[@TNothingFree]

​@@TheFirstHarbinger In Israel it's the same, people are very united and work together. You usually can relay on others for help. Soldiers sign on equipment but even if something misses simple soldiers don't pay much, it's usually the officers get harsher punishment.

[@MarcosElMalo2]

@@TheFirstHarbinger But what about scroungers? Your unit is tasked with installing wire along a certain point on your perimeter. You’re not issued enough and you don’t know how long it will take to get more. You send out your scrounger who finds some barbed wire that is not serving a purpose (perhaps set up to protect an older perimeter no longer used) or perhaps being hoarded by another unit. Should he not beg, borrow, trade for, or steal the wire so your unit can complete its task? This sort of thing is tolerated because it’s not for personal gain and it gets the job done. It’s tolerated, but might still be punished as a minor infraction (getting yelled at).

[@pointlesspublishing5351]

Sounds like van Creveld describes in "Kampfkraft" as cohesion of the troops.

[@Karathos]

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!

[@Tonixxy]

This is amazingly described. True 100%

[@user-xq2fz5tz9t]

Absolutely agreed.

[@worldoftancraft]

So in civilized white democratic world, it's not like you occupy a position - it's YOUR position, right? Impressive. Demokrasi.

[@Karathos]

@@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.

[@worldoftancraft]

@@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.

[@sleat]

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)

[@Pilotmario]

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.

[@sleat]

@@Pilotmario 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.

[@LAG09]

​@@Pilotmario 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.

[@Pilotmario]

@@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.

[@LAG09]

@@Pilotmario 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.

[@TheRedneckGamer1979]

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.

[@1Maklak]

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.

[@cs40660]

gives one more reason to end the war, i want to go shoot rpks and an rpg

[@Xiao_Hu_ZY]

Total Chad move lmao

[@kaszaspeter77]

When you hear those stories that Russian courts have actually sentenced someone to jail and/or a fine for corruption - just be sure that this has nothing to do with "justice" and "law enforcement" and everything to do with internal turf wars in the military and elsewhere, with some people ending up weaponizing the court system to their advantage. Also be sure that the judge got his fair share, too.

[@TheBelrick]

This channel is pure propaganda. Given that Russia is clearly defeating Ukraine despite all the vast failed efforts of the enraged NWO Globalists. So why on earth would any sentient human being watch this video? Unless they are a sadist, they wouldnt Remember this day, you watched a video and believed a man about Ghost of Kiev, Ukraine victory and Muh Russia defeated.

[@kaszaspeter77]

@@TheBelrick "you watched a video and believed a man about Ghost of Kiev, Ukraine victory and Muh Russia defeated" - did you watch the video? There is absolutely nothing like any of that in the video.

[@TheBelrick]

@@kaszaspeter77 THE TITLE IS RUSSIAN FAILURE IN UKRAINE!!! With an army in the field half the size of the total AFU the Ukrainian army has been soundly trashed. Most heavy equipment destroyed. Totally immobilized their forces so that they cannot mass because if they try moving forces in numbers they get bombed. Under constant relentless bombardment causing critical personal drain Ukraine isnt appearing to be able to replace. You have to understand, its not Russia vs. Ukraine war. Its globalist new world order and all their vassals. Yes puppet states including ours and this garbage channel. Vs. Russia (and likely soon, China and India and Iran) The degree of propaganda here is staggering and you are clearly not prepared to filter it out.

[@kaszaspeter77]

​@@TheBelrick The title is "How Corruption Destroys Armies" and failure in Ukr is an example (and is in the subtitle, true). But if you have watched the video at all, it is much more a generic description of how, well, corruption destroys armies. As for the rest: the Russians have clearly not destroyed the Ukr army, otherwise they would be in Kiev, Kharkhov, Odessa, Lviv, Cherkassy etc. and they are not. This is not propaganda, this is fact. Don't tell me they haven't tried or that they are holding back their best, that is BS. I understand and I agree it is not just Russia vs Ukr because most of the West supports Ukr - much like they supported the USSR against NS Germany in ww2. As for India, I think they are more Western-oriented than you might think; they are certainly not friends of China. Also, I don't understand how your comment is relevant to mine? I was speaking about how internal strife works in a system like Russia, not how Russia is losing the war etc.

[@TheBelrick]

@@kaszaspeter77 Corruption is part of the human spirit. But would you watch a video by Hitler teaching you about corruption and the failure of the Russian army in Berlin? Why source your information on corruption from a person lying about "Russia failure in Ukraine" When clearly AFU are in serious trouble.

[@SergeantAradir]

Quite interestingly in that regard: Shogiu is the second defense minister in charge of the modernisiation of the russian army under putin. According to a eastern-europe-researcher, the first defense minister was actually interested in raising the efficience of the army. So of course he was promptly let go, after some pressure from certain interest groupts. Meanwhile Shogiu is NOT someone with military experience and quite pleased with letting certain interest groups run the thing, resulting in corruption and the like. Also important: Shogiu is not an ethnic russian and presents himself as such (just look at the design for his palace). This is important because it places him outside the fight for succession. That makes him automatically more trustworthy for putin, but also means ofc that he is not the most capable guy. He does not have to be. Everyone was just fine with having a very weak minister that does not work on actually reforming the military.

[@faradubiifaradubii5857]

*Shoigu Sorry...

[@giorgialadashvili4771]

After Russia's rather unimpressive military performance against us in 2008 War, the previous Russian Minister of Defense (Serdyukov) did begin some modernization reforms, but many of those were rolled back by Shoigu. Basically, as ironic as it may sound, Shoigu's idiocy may have saved Ukraine just as much as Zelenskyy's courage did.

[@allennguyen4456]

This is why pluralism in a country is extremely important. When you have one faction absolutely dominating a country, if that faction is good, progress will be good and at fast pace. But if the dominating faction is bad and corrupt, progress will be disastrously wrong. Pluralism might cause slow progress but one thing is for sure different factions check against each other, constantly calling out each other's corruption

[@casbot71]

There have been some that have tried to reform the military and therefore been a threat to those profiting from the rampant corruption. They have a history of being clumsy near windows on upper floors of buildings.

[@LordOfLight]

I never knew all that about Shoigu, though I could see he's not ethnic Russian. I think he's got a cheek though, wearing a uniform he never earned.

[@atomf9143]

How well this video aged, with Prigozhin and Shoigu’s fates since… almost feels like foreshadowing lol.

[@TheInternationalBlackLipPlate]

This video did not age well lol... turns out the corruption was in ukraine

[@atomf9143]

@@TheInternationalBlackLipPlate I'm gonna ask you once to elaborate.

[@christianjacinto7042]

Its a bot ​@atomf9143

[@atomf9143]

@@christianjacinto7042 I know, I want to see how stupid I can make it. They always say stupid stuff when replied to.

[@a24396]

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!

[@als1023]

Same

[@airborneranger-ret]

Agree ;)

[@MarcosElMalo2]

I’d like to point out that CGSC (and Naval War College) makes videos of public talks available on KZbin. Certainly not as in depth as a graduate level course or seminar, but they can be quite insightful to a lay audience.

[@a24396]

@@MarcosElMalo2 A terrific reminder!

[@ulrikschackmeyer848]

Hear, hear.

[@stansbruv3169]

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.

[@crazy031089]

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.

[@GregoryMcCarthy123]

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!

[@PresleyPerswain]

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.

[@HansLemurson]

It is amusing though, that the first Sponsored episode is the one on Corruption.

[@glennkeppel9836]

@@PresleyPerswain This bloke is a game designer by hobby. I think he might have another channel about gaming (I don't think it was this one).

[@MarcosElMalo2]

@@glennkeppel9836 It was this one. He is planning on creating a different gamer channel for that content.

[@clairenollet2389]

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.

[@82dorrin]

There were horrifying levels of corruption in the US Army Service of Supply during WWII.

[@Kaiserboo1871]

That kind of corruption, while bad, won’t actually do that much damage.

[@clairenollet2389]

@@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.

[@Kaiserboo1871]

@@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.

[@rajsouth101]

So,who did your aunt married at the end 😚😚😊😁😁..?

[@stealthytree3860]

As someone from the USA, I would be very interested in a deep dive into corruption in the American military and your assessment on any low hanging fruit that we could use to improve.

[@kristianhartlevjohansen3541]

600$ hammers - allegedly 🤷🏻‍♂️🤷🏻‍♂️

[@raul0ca]

Ideological corruption: bright rainbow flags on vehicles, lowered standards for favored groups, maternity leave for pregnant men, openly communist professors in military academies

[@davehale7576]

yours are the same as the UK issues.. its the over charging for items/equip. someone mentions the $600 hammer.. probably a touch high but not far off. the "excuse", in part, for a tank costing 2x what it probably could or should is they need to pay for limited numbers of production but with huge r&d costs to cover. ie the skills needed have to be paid and kept relevant even when they arn't producing. somewhat true but just an excuse to inflate costs. Your next door neighbour isn't winning the lottery and starting up some equipment manufacturing company and supplying them better gear in a hurry either. Its (although denied) a closed shop as to who the contracts are handed to. so in short its the "top dogs" greasing each others pockets and hiring the old boy generals as long as they dont complain too much when serving about delays/over pricing causing the need to limit equipment numbers etc. The stealing and stuff going awol isn't much of an issue. Happens but to the tune of pennies hardly worth counting. The $600 hammer is also because fred who owns the hammer making company thats been "selected" to make them needs a good wage. He had several years of "meetings" to discuss specifics/security etc etc while politicians all played the game of "im important so have to talk about work rather than do any" -eg someone like perun will be employed to spend weeks/months producing some report on how useful said hammer will be, its pros and cons etc and thus take up a huge chunk of the budget recouped by having to inflate the cost. rather than just agree its a hammer and buy 10000 at $6 they end up buying 100 at $600

[@thejoshman3843]

we did get those reports, from edward snowden, julian assange, & donald trump. How do you like how the US DOJ has treated them. How about the FBI raiding james o keefe at 6 am over ashley bidens diary. LOL the US corruption broadcasts into your face every morning on the View, MSNBC NYT et al.

[@alansmith8893]

Congress.

[@Oberon4278]

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.

[@MarcosElMalo2]

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?

[@Oberon4278]

​@@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.

[@MarcosElMalo2]

@@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).

[@Oberon4278]

@@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.)

[@MarcosElMalo2]

@@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.

[@timmcpherson1646]

I heard this from a Russian vet who was in the Soviet air force in ww2 as a mechanic. The russian ground crews for their bombers would be on a rotation where on every mission ONE of them would go with the bomber. It was motivation to make sure they did there job of servicing the aircraft properly. I have no evidence to back the story up, he died over 20 years ago, but his daughter knows the story. Great work Perun

[@robb1324]

Great idea on the surface... But who then decides which one of the ground crew workers goes? If I were a Russian General I would make all of my ground crew dual proficient as navigators and make sure they go up every single time 😂

[@robb1324]

I would send the CEO of whoever owns the company that makes MIGs go up at least weekly as well!

[@glennsimpson7659]

For the same reason, Russian paratroops pack their own parachutes.

[@timmcpherson1646]

@@glennsimpson7659 During ww2, (now im trying to remember if it was SAS or the Brit Para Regt) They had WAAF's (womens aux air force) packing there chutes. Because Chutes would fail to open and would "candle flame" meaning the canopy and risers had exited the pack but the canopy remained closed until the para hit the ground, They only gave men one or two practice jumps because so many died during them. After 2 nightmare practice jumps that lead to far more deaths of dozens of men, the officers of the regt figured something was going wrong in the packing of chutes. 2 men hid themselves in the large hanger where the WAAF's had huge tables to lay out the chutes to be folded and packed. It was done in a sort of production line where there were 4 women at the end who were packing the now folded chutes into the packs. One of the women was packing the chutes in the wrong way, instead of the chute having the strings out, she was wrapping them up inside the canopy somehow before packing them. The officers pulled her aside, there was a clear instructional card nearby showing how it was to be done, they asked her why she was doing it the wrong way "Oh this way is far neater" was her answer. She had killed more paratroops than the germans that month.

[@glennsimpson7659]

@@timmcpherson1646 Good story!

[@Avibu-Plays]

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

[@KurtisIsley]

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.

[@islandwills2778]

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)

[@AllisterCaine]

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. 🤣

[@ZAELish]

Also he fired his minister of defence who was trying to actually do something about it because he pissed of to many people .

[@seimen4348]

You really believe he doesnt know the capabilities?

[@XenonPrimeSBSV]

@@seimen4348 Obviously not given no leader wants to look weak and impotent as farmers literally steal his tanks.

[@soorian6493]

As far as sponsorships go, this felt pretty tasteful, contained, and well suited for your audience. Definitely think it's for the best that it stays with these more academic videos as opposed to the ones directly about current events especially when casualties are involved. Overall inoffensive and skillfully done

[@unclethanatos]

To add: it’d be both more compelling and more tasteful if you have personal experience or at least assessments of the utility and quality of a sponsor. If you’d said “Ground News is a service I personally use and recommend,” I would both be more inclined to use the service (because you strike me as balanced, well-informed, and credible), and it would feel less like a sponsorship than a personal recommendation that you happen to be getting paid to make. It’s also a bit more respectful of my intelligence: I don’t like the idea of being an eyeball whose video-watching seconds are being monetized. But I am open to relevant product recommendations from someone whose judgment i respect. And I don’t mind that you get paid to do it if it’s something you genuinely, personally recommend. I understand that being paid primarily for your credibility rather than your reach can introduce perverse incentives and open you up to more salient allegations of shillhood. But the masterclass you just provided on the creeping culture of corruption is all the evidence I need that you are capable of remaining selective in your sponsorships and objective in your recommendations. It also helps to know that you clearly have an income outside the channel, and so can afford to be picky.

[@lukajolich7669]

I actually got that app based on the sponsorship of another KZbinr and its honestly been a nice app, even when you dont go for the paid model. It's helped me keep up-to-date and find various sources on topics.

[@SamtheIrishexan]

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.

[@winter_s9179]

This is one of the best structured, factually supported, thorough and clearly written presentations I’ve seen. This despite a difficult and often sensitive subject which by its very nature is often clandestine. Kudos on a stellar job.

[@morganmorse2086]

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.

[@arthurmoore9488]

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.

[@killer3000ad]

It's creepy how accurate this video is months later. We've seen footage of supposedly modern Russian helmets revealed to be little more than cold war era helmets once the cover is removed. Elsewhere I've seen footage of the ballistic plates in some captured Russian vests being nothing more than thin sheets of metal.

[@bishop253]

My favorite was the explosives that were actually blocks of wood.

[@jjanovsky1983]

@@bishop253 OSHA-certified ERA blocks :)

[@massgunner4152]

The shitbox 1980 The shitbox 1980 is real!

[@WillHayes44]

You haven't even addressed the "ballistic" helmets who can be crushed by bare hands.

[@jonathannelson103]

@@WillHayes44 or the "reactive armor" on their tanks made of....egg crates.

[@marinblaze]

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!

[@CamembertDave]

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.

[@Vadegu]

I think the 20% is the total lost do corruption on all those levels.

[@vincentbarkley9121]

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]

now you understand why we had a revolution against these upper level guys in 1917

[@arx3516]

@@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.

[@popnorbert8465]

@@principetnomusic A shame you ended up with the same kind of people, in the same positions of power, even after 100 years.

[@shooter7a]

@@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.

[@principetnomusic]

@@popnorbert8465 That is our tragedy, yeah.

[@Durandalski]

I grew up as an American in Poland in the early post soviet era. I got to see first hand the corruption attitude the soviet system bred, and how the Poles fought to restore their systems and culture. It was also fascinating to watch Polish soviet era movies. The Poles always hated the soviets and their movies made during that time are chock full of subtle digs at the corruption and hypocrisy of the system, hidden just under a surface message for the movie that would get past the censors. I absolutely love Poland and the Polish people, loads of respect for them and their history.

[@rdrrr]

In the West we tend to think of the Eastern Bloc countries as being obedient vassals but many of them were anything but! Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary in particular were gigantic pains in the USSR's backside. Of course the people hated the USSR, but even the nominally friendly governments were keen to preserve as much of their independence as they could under the circumstances.

[@ronblack7870]

after the war i hope ukrainian leaders study how poland attacked corruption. ukraine has been corrupted by the soviets for many years . and when there is no money corruption becomes a way of life. but since ukraine is a democracy with free elections there is always the possibility of electing some stooge who is pro russian. maybe not now anymore i hope.

[@icosthop9998]

TY

[@lornespry]

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!

[@themugwump33]

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.

[@joesomebody3365]

Ha, those classes were 1 in 10 at the best of times.

[@justdoingitjim7095]

I worked in the Headquarters Company office as Admin Chief, when I was in the Marine Corps. In 1975 we had a procurement issue with Central Supply. It seems that they had gotten a different supplier for office products and there were certain products we couldn't get, because they were never in stock. All of the Admin Chiefs around the base became like 'Radar' in the MASH episodes. We were trading with each other to get items we needed for our offices to function. The biggest item was writing pens. They simply disappeared from Central Supply and were never stocked again. We were allowed a 2 dozen allotment of pens each month for our office. But, there was never any to be had, so our supply slowly dwindled as they were being stolen by soldiers standing Fire Watch duty in the barracks that needed pens for their day jobs like in supply or the motor pool. I literally chained a pen to my desk because I had officers that came to sign papers who tried to keep the pen. If you had a box of pens (12 in a box) you could trade them for four blank DD 214's and a gross (48) of blank dog tags! The DD 214's were restricted items and my Captain had to accompany me and sign for them when I made the trade. I was finally down to my last pen and I would take it home with me (I lived off base) every night. When our First Sergeant started receiving duty logs from Fire Watch Guards that weren't filled out because they didn't have a pen, he decided to find out why. A week later when I asked him how his research on the pens was going, he looked me straight in the eye and told me to never bring up that subject again! Someone had scared him so bad that he was even afraid to talk about it and the TOP was NOT someone who scared easily! This problem was still ongoing when I got out in 1976.

[@raidkoast]

Either he got scared OOOR Hear me out... He got an offer and then got in on the fun. I've heard by second hand about a fair bit of corruption in the corporation I work for, in one of their factories.. Now here in Sweden, that shit is pretty hard to pull off so It's always minor stuff like that or insanely intricate long term schemes. Like replacing Equipment and clothes lockers that worked perfectly fine. Then the guys replacing are supposed to scrap the old lockers because the company has a policy that NOTHING is allowed to be taken outside the fence of the factory. To keep it all low and under the radar, it's never many lockers at a time but one in a while like it'd break or something. Maybe document that the doors where hit by a forklift or the locker is rusted etc. But these guys hired to replace the lockers are allowed to drive their car into the premises and they're friends with the guard at the gate. Trusted people. Seldom checked. Suddenly a lot of guys who are friends with these contract guys who where hired to replace the stuff has very nice used lockers and shelves etc. and maybe some old equipment that is not tracked when it's scrapped is included in these "Scrapped" lockers. Like pneumatic grinders, high end gloves etc.

[@SCIFIguy64]

@@raidkoast This, I work in a government facility, if something is going to be replaced, we put it in a storage area to be listed on an auction site. Sometimes, if it’s an old but nice desk, or maybe some pans from the kitchen, they won’t get listed, just disappear. Of course it’s peanuts to genuine corruption, and most places are aware it happens, but it’s a crack that could be stretched open under certain circumstances.

[@williamlloyd3769]

Sometimes, if we got desperate and got approval of the XO, our Supply Officer would give us a 5 lbs tin of coffee for trade with one of the Long Beach Naval Shipyard shops. It was amazing how a part was not in the USN supply system but we could trade for new old stock part for our destroyer.

[@dukezinnia1667]

Corruption is funny when it's about pens, a theft reserved for the pettiest of the petty. No one broke and spent a few dollars at Officemax for themselves?

[@justdoingitjim7095]

@@dukezinnia1667 I had to live off base because base housing had a 2 year waiting list, so my rent was high. I had a wife and a new baby to support on my meager pay. I was doing good if I could afford gas to get to work each morning, much less have any extra money to spend on office supplies.

[@Itslvle]

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.

[@sciloj]

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.

[@fagerdam]

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.

[@sciloj]

@@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.

[@TomorrowWeLive]

@@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).

[@Itslvle]

@@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.

[@bigbootros4362]

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.

[@samsonoluwatosinomoloyin9469]

Lol. Africa is the central hub of corruption. Nothing works here.

[@suddenllybah]

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.

[@samsonoluwatosinomoloyin9469]

@@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.

[@XenonPrimeSBSV]

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.

[@Dap1ssmonk]

@@XenonPrimeSBSV 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.

[@mariahavraham7507]

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.

[@sixstringedthing]

Biggest challenges facing the lowly Russian grunt: Finding anything still worth stealing amongst the junk that's supplied to your unit, and avoiding getting locked up or shot for stealing something that a better-connected soldier or officer already had their eye on. What a shitty life. :(

[@curtiswebb8135]

You nailed it.

[@gamingforever9121]

That’s Russia 😂

[@mnxs]

I mean, since they often choose to instead just loot the Ukrainian civilian populace out of spite of that unfairness, my sympathy of their plight is significantly tempered. But yes, in the end, they're dealt a shitty hand. And it's even worse for the mobilised conscripts.

[@buzuuu]

"You can pull optics and wiring out of the vehicle.." It actually a lot more petty in majority of cases - pots, pans, socks, boots, chairs, salt, tea... An average conscript would not dare steal actual tank equipment, mostly because of difficulty of selling it... On a high level, most money is stolen by simply inflating costs. They are buying shovels for $10 bucks (for example), claim everywhere that they paid $20, pocket the other $10, tell the shovel manufacturer "keep mouth shut, or we buy nothing". So the cheapest crap costs the government tons of money and no money is left for advanced equipment

[@judithbradford9130]

but I bet eBay has been a godsend to the vast majority of petty equipment thieves. I always wondered why there was so MUCH Russian military "surplus" for sale.

[@stefanb6539]

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.

[@tgeliot]

Excellent exposition. Thank you.

[@MsZeeZed]

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…

[@allydea]

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.

[@Haan22]

@@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.

[@Andy-P]

@@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.

[@allydea]

@@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.

[@MsZeeZed]

@@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.

[@DougsInnerView]

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.

[@Yashatheseal]

Cap

[@hydroaegis6658]

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.

[@batboy555]

I heard something this happened in the Angeles city airbase too.

[@Djamonja]

@@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.

[@keith3761]

@@Djamonja yeah sounds like pure bullshit.

[@William2669]

I worked at a pharmaceutical company where I did quality tests on our medicines going out to either market sales or research. Most of them were just placed in this cabinet and labeled to be taken and used when needed for the tests we performed until we were done with them, after which they were destroyed. Except for the narcotics. If you wanted to test those, you'd need to approach one of 3 people on site who had the access key to a blast-proof safe. Who'd weigh the sample before handing it to you and having signed off on it by the both of us. And weighed again after I was done with it and they compared this to how much I supposedly had taken out (aka did I take out more than I had noted on my own papers and printouts) and there was only a tiny margin of error allowed. Then the difference in weight was recorded, signed off by the two of us again before it disappeared into the safe again. They didn't kid around with these procedures, if you spilled something, they'd scrap it off the surface and weigh it to make sure the total was still in order and if you were unlucky enough to spill it on your clothes in a large enough quantity, you had to hand over the contaminated clothes. Refusing that was seen as attempted theft of narcotics with all legal consequences that came with it.

[@nrm224]

Wow. Incredible content. Came here based on a hat-tip from a speech at the Australian Institute for International Affairs. Mad impressive.

[@Viggo_Frb]

Thanks mate - always enjoy your level headed, non-sensationalist, in-depth work - keep it up and cheers!

[@Grigorii-j7z]

I can give an anecdotal testimony about military budget usage. Around decade ago I was employed at repair shipyard with main focus on submarines and small-medium size battleships. We occasionally receive commercial orders but main client always was a Navy. We received an order for capital repair (e.g. rebuild completely) old shore line battleship. When I looked at some of the recites for this project my eye catched a 14 units of toilets 2300$ (my salary was around 800$/m) per unit. I remember thinking this is some special hi-tech ship toilets I never knew existed and went on the ship to check them out. I was quite surprised to see a regular retail ceramic toilets installed in the lavatory. So I asked around and do some googling. Average price for exactly this article in our region was around 100$ per piece. This cases isn't reflected as corruption because this purchase complied with our special federal law "About government auctions". It's just so happens that this law, active to this very day, has a lot of build-in loopholes allowing this kind of contracts. P.S. Apologies for possible grammar mistakes.

[@nomos8063]

" dont ask dont tell "

[@mnxs]

I appreciate you sharing your story; your English is perfectly understandable :) I'm assuming this was something that happened in Russia, right?

[@Grigorii-j7z]

@@mnxs yes. It was Russian shipyard.

[@hrknesslovesu]

Your English is REALLY good

[@Melody_Raventress]

Your grammar, while a little rough, is perfectly understandable. Your story, tho' is both unsurprising, and undoubtedly more common than most would think. Thanks for sharing.

[@funpolice4416]

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

[@andrewcraig-bennett3659]

Very famous example. The Regia Marina were actually aware of the problem in 1938. By 1942 they … hadn’t been able to solve it.

[@kantemirovskaya1lightninga30]

Thank you-a great video. As someone who spent time in 13 countries working for "all types" of governments both in active combat and not, this was a very "heartfelt" episode my friend...