54 - Russia's Soft Underbelly: Alcoholism and Corruption
There are many reasons why Russia’s military machine has under-performed against Ukraine. This edition of the Newsletter will examine some of least discussed significant deficiencies in the war effort after reviewing those explanations that are most talked about by experts commenting on why Russia’s war against Ukraine has gone so badly from Moscow’s perspective. Alcoholism and corruption are essential to understanding Russia’s apparent failures.
Leadership
Ukraine’s charismatic national leadership by President Volodymyr Zelensky has emboldened extraordinary courage and patriotism among his compatriots. Without his tireless marshaling of and calling forward of an immense surge of Ukrainian national sentiment, his troops might well have resisted the invasion less forcefully and (so far) less successfully. Putin and his generals expected Ukraine to surrender before the onslaught of greater numbers of Russian soldiers and their comparatively massive military might. But, as the long siege Mariupol demonstrated, Ukrainians were willing to fight fiercely, and against overwhelming odds.
The fact that Ukrainians fought back more effectively than even Washington and London thought that they would, and that Zelensky stood tall as a beacon of free world determination, brought reinforcements to Ukraine’s side. The delivery first of old Soviet-style materiel from neighboring European countries and then the emergency provision of drones, anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, body armor, long-range howitzers, and steady supplies of fuel and food, enabled Ukraine’s outnumbered fighting forces to counter Russian depredations -- a confrontation now entering a relentless third month in Ukraine’s east and south. The equipment strengthening of Ukraine’s own war effort has compensated somewhat for the West’s refusal to put boots on the ground or airplanes overhead in Ukraine.
Morale made a major difference. Zelensky stayed in Kyiv when it was under assault and seemed likely to fall. His authenticity and his refusal even to begin to contemplate any kind of surrender to Putin’s onslaught gave the Ukrainian struggle to survive a critical moral underpinning. He rightly made Ukraine’s war Europe’s, and persuaded the West that it was joining Ukraine in the free world’s existential battle against the dark forces of Putin’s tyranny. And so the war has become.
Yesterday, Zelensky reiterated that Ukraine would never compromise – that it wanted all Russians off its national soil in the east, and in Crimea. His and Ukraine’s ambitions have altered, accentuated by Ukraine’s victories on the slog of a battlefield so far. But saying so, and rejecting (for now) peace negotiations that might let Putin save face and exit gracefully, demonstrates Zelensky’s exquisite sense of timing and of message. Only by ramping up his leadership appeal, he has reckoned, can he keep Europe and the wider West at his side, their materiel coming, and his own troops poised to achieve future greatness. Like all charismatic leaders, Zelensky knows that enunciating an all-encompassing vision is essential, as is continuing to mobilize followers of all kinds and at all levels behind a vision which they (including Washington, London, Brussels, Berlin, and the rest) can share and support.
Morale and Pay
Contrastingly, Russia troop morale is palpably abysmal. In the failed surge against Kyiv, young conscripts abandoned their tanks and personnel carriers. Many committed atrocities. Many looted – even taking washing machines and refrigerators – and fled in their vehicles or on foot across the Belarusian border and back to mother Russia. Putin had to bring in mercenary reinforcements from Syria, from Chechnya, from Libya, and even from West Africa to show his hapless Russian soldiers how to fight and how to commit war crimes against civilians.
Russian soldiers are badly paid. So they steal. So they jump off their tanks or try to defend themselves in their tanks with improvised (and ineffective) metal barriers. Even in eastern and southern Ukraine, where Russia now controls towns and territory, the troops of the line bemoan to local persons that they fail to understand why Putin invaded, and what they are doing.
Russia’s war effort has suffered from major logistical weaknesses, being unable efficiently to keep extended lines of tanks fueled, howitzers re-supplied with ammunition, and soldiers fed. Those insufficiencies have hampered the invaders and weakened morale.
The Vodka Factor
But there are two additional characteristics that help to explain why Putin’s Russia has performed so poorly in Ukraine. His officers and soldier drink heavily. When Ukraine recovered Bucha and other cities and towns on the outskirts of Kyiv, it discovered Russian bivouacs littered with oppressive numbers of whisky, vodka, and beer bottles looted from the stores and houses of the various towns. This corresponds with global figures on alcoholism: After Hungary, Russia has the globe’s highest reported levels of personal alcohol consumption; 21 percent of the population is regarded as alcoholic. That translates into the drinking of the equivalent of 16 liters of pure alcohol per person per year. (The U. S.’s amount is 9 liters.) After Hungary and Russia on the alcoholism rankings come Belarus, Latvia, South Korea, Slovenia, the U. S. (13 percent of people), Poland, Estonia, and Slovakia. Ukrainians drink far less, 12 percent of their people being rated alcoholic. But the point is that fighting a war is harder if those on the front and back lines are soused.
These results are amplified when one examines alcoholism among males only. Here Russia ranks first, with 37 percent of all males classified as alcoholic. The U.S. tops the list for females (10 percent of whom imbibe heavily), but doesn’t make the top ten places for males. (World Population Review, 2022.)
Grand Corruption
What is also remarked upon too little is that Russia is among the most corrupt countries on earth. The latest Corruption Perceptions Index, produced in Berlin by Transparency International, places Russia at 136 of 180 states, meaning that Russia ranks together with Mali, Myanmar, and Pakistan toward the most corrupt bottom of the scale. Russia falls lower than Paraguay, Angola, and Liberia. (According to the Index, the planet’s least corrupt nations are the Nordics, New Zealand, and Singapore, with the U.S. ranking 27th.)
Ukraine is corrupt, too, placing 122 on the CPI list, but Zelensky has evinced his personal freedom from taints of corruption (certainly since the invasion) whereas Putin and all of his generals, as well as the Russian politico-security apparatus more broadly, is widely believed to be profiting in this war, as before from corruption.
When generals steal, so colonels follow suit, so do captains and lieutenants, and the foot soldier loots on the ground. There are ample reports from Russia of myriad officers being prosecuted for taking money for maneuvers, and not maneuvering. Food supplies are sold for profit by the higher ups in Russia, as on the war front. Everyone in the Russian side of the war knows that profiteering takes place. Fighting becomes less fair, and morale suffers, if the fellow in the trenches suspects that he is systematically underfed, underpaid, and purposeless while his commanders steal and grow wealthy.
Russia, as we said before (#11, “Russia’s Grand Corruption,” March 18) is a criminalized state where Putin’s whole purpose is to self-aggrandize in order to acquire power and wealth so that he can control his close followers (industrialists and oligarchs included) by distributions of patronage and other rewards that can be granted and withheld at will. Nothing illustrates this so well as Jason Horowitz’s riveting expose in Sunday’s New York Times of how Putin has brought the Russian Orthodox Church and its Patriarch, Kirill I, to heel. “It’s a kind of mafia concept. If you’re in you’re in. You can’t get out.”
More on corruption globally, tomorrow.