April 7, 2025: Several senior Ukrainian officers and military specialists are being prosecuted for corruption. Currently most such cases involve officers or recruiting officials accepting bribes to authorize soldiers to leave the military. Many of the corrupt officials do not hide their new wealth and their sudden affluence draws the attention of the corruption investigators. Arrests are made and the culprits jailed. In many cases, wives or children of the jailed men have left the country with the bribe money. From their foreign exile they will finance efforts to get their corrupt father freed.

Since the first year of the war, corruption has been a common problem on both sides. In late 2022 Volodymyr Zelensky fired the head of the Internal Security Agency/SBU and the chief prosecutor along with over sixty other officials, and brought treason and collaboration charges against 651 SBU members and local officials. Most of those charged worked for the SBU.

The large number of people charged is the result of more Ukrainians reporting information leaks and collaboration with the Russians in Ukraine as well as the occupied territories, especially the ones that were seized in the first week of the Russian invasion. There were also complaints from more recent members of the SBU that there were still a lot of SBU veterans who openly criticized government policy and condoned corruption, especially within the SBU.

The SBU is the successor to the Ukrainian branch of the KGB. After Ukraine became independent in 1991, obvious KGB loyalists were fired but many veterans remained. These officials perpetuated a culture of corruption along with the formidable deception and operational skills the KGB excelled in. The SBU is a large organization, with 35,000 employees. That is the same size as the American FBI, for a country with seven times more people. Equivalent European agencies, like DST in France and MI5 in Britain are equally small, relative to population, as the FBI. On a per-capita basis Western internal agencies have about 109 agency personnel per million population. For the Russian FSB it is 591 and for the SBU it is about 850. For the Soviet KGB it was 1,600.

The SBU, like its predecessor the KGB, demands high performance and discipline. In return, KGB personnel were free to make a little extra on the side, The KGB was literally above the law as the only ones who could arrest KGB personnel were other KGB personnel. The post-Soviet FSB and SBU have similar immunities.

A growing number of the post-199os SBU hires were personnel who, like those who voted Zelensky into office in 2019, saw corruption as a major obstacle to Ukrainian prosperity and independence from Russian influence. Then came the 2022 invasion and NATO military aid and assistance, especially in intelligence collection. NATO, mainly the U.S., monitored and decrypted Russian communications relevant to Ukraine and shared data with the Ukrainians. That revealed evidence that turned suspicions of SBU treason into indictments. With leaky SBU members identified it was possible to identify many of their Ukrainian sources. It also sent a message to the SBU that the long sought culture shift in the organization was happening.

In Russia opinion polls revealed that most Russians accepted corruption as a basic element in Russian culture and unlikely to be eliminated any time soon. Most Russians also complain that the prevalence of corruption hurts the economy and is another unpleasant aspect of life in Russia. While the government generates a lot of publicity about anti-corruption efforts, it is widely understood that, when some major government official or former official is arrested and charged with corruption there is more to the story. First, the official is probably guilty as charged and the details make interesting reading. The other part of the story is generally not published and involves the details of which other senior officials the corrupt official offended. Issues over sharing are the usual reason for a senior politician or military officer being prosecuted for corruption. While there may be no honor among thieves, there is a code of conduct and those who misbehave are publicly spanked, lose a lot of money and often spend some time in prison.

Another unique aspect of Russian corruption is that it is more prevalent in the military because theft of state property has been the Russian national pastime for centuries. This corruption is seen as a major factor in Russian combat disasters. Even military leaders accept that, but in peacetime the opportunities are too abundant and the discipline too inadequate to prevent corruption. Government prosecutors estimate that military corruption costs the military over $500 million a year and disrupts the operation of units, major programs and everything else. Despite the frequent prosecutions it is believed corruption in the military is increasing. There were 2,800 officers and officials prosecuted in 2018, an increase over previous years despite so many of those prosecuted getting convicted and imprisoned.

In 2013 Russian prosecutors announced that they had arrested three army officers and accused them of stealing seven tons of fuel. To make matters worse, this was not a gang operation but three officers each operating independently and stealing diesel from large tanker trucks sent to support the first annual tank gunnery and driving competition. This event got a lot of publicity. Despite all that attention, these three officers thought they could divert about $5,000 worth of diesel fuel to the black market. Such fuel thefts are not unusual in the army, and most perpetrators are not caught. But these three officers were bold, or stupid, and tried to flitch the fuel at a high-profile event. The actual theft occurred while fuel and other resources were stockpiled for the event. Such criminality is all too common and Russian corruption investigators believe that about 20 percent of the military budget is lost to corruption and outright theft. Despite more frequent arrests and prosecution of offenders, the stealing continues.