Russia skeptical of corruption wash
New York Times
MOSCOW — Ripples of scandal are spreading in Russia’s Far East, where, auditors say, $472 million in construction financing was misallocated ahead of a government summit meeting. About $200 million in missing funds have led to firings in Russia’s space industry. And corruption in the Defense Ministry has figured prominently in Russia’s news cycles since Nov. 6, leaving the fate of its former minister uncertain.
In the past, President Vladimir V. Putin has always been reluctant to expel or prosecute highlevel officials, despite widespread complaints about corruption. So the mushrooming scandals are unusual, raising questions about what has changed.
There is little doubt the Kremlin has been battered by opposition campaigns highlighting official corruption. Political strategists, searching for ideas powerful enough to consolidate the country around Putin, may seize on fighting corruption as a Kremlin effort, and recent steps hint at a populist push to expose and punish guilty officials.
“A tough, uncompromising battle with corruption has begun,” announced Arkady Mamontov, a pro-government television host, in a much-hyped documentary titled “Corruption” that, though it was broadcast close to midnight Tuesday, attracted nearly 20 percent of the television audience. “In the course of the next months, we will see many interesting things.”
Political observers have watched the anti-corruption drive curiously, debating where it might be headed, and especially whether, for the first time since Putin came to power, high-ranking officials would face prosecution. On Monday, the newspaper Vedomosti declared that Moscow was witnessing the beginning of a “cleansing of the elite” — a flushing out of a political system that lacks other mechanisms of renewal, like competitive elections. Others were skeptical that the effort would reach beyond midlevel officials.
“It cannot become an overall ideology, because Putin’s system is dependent on corruption — on corruption as a form of management and a guarantee of loyalty from officials,” said Alexei Navalny, a blogger and anticorruption activist.
After the show was broadcast, Igor Bunin, director of the Center for Political Technologies in Moscow, said he believed fighting corruption would “become one of the elements of the regime’s ideology,” and that more films — and more prosecutions — were on the way.
“You need to understand that when you start such a battle with corruption, it touches the whole political class and, of course, leads to direct political consequences, a new political system,” Bunin said in an interview with the radio station Kommersant FM.