"They took it out on KAMAZ." How Russian soldiers and officers stole underpants, berets and body armor from the army

 https://www.bbc.com/russian/features-63177093

"They took it out on KAMAZ." How Russian soldiers and officers stole underpants, berets and body armor from the army

Those mobilized for the war with Ukraine are forced to buy almost everything for themselves - from shorts and shoes to body armor and thermal imagers. “It is not clear to me where the one and a half million kits that were stored at the personnel reception points have gone,” said Lieutenant General of the Reserve and State Duma deputy Andrei Gurulev. The BBC found a partial answer to his question in court rulings: While Vladimir Putin was plotting an invasion of Ukraine, the Russian military robbed its own warehouses for years, sometimes stealing property with trucks.

In mid-July, when Russian troops, together with the Wagner PMC, stormed the Uglegorsk thermal power plant in the Luhansk region, at the other end of Eurasia - on the Iturup Island of the Kuril chain - a meeting of the Kuril garrison military court was underway. The head of the clothing service of the rear of the local military unit, Dmitry Gorin, was tried for official forgery.

In the fall of 2021, Gorin issued false invoices. According to them, two servicemen received property that no one actually gave them. So, one of them allegedly received 100 knapsacks, three balaclavas, four summer caps and two sets of suits that protect against wind and moisture. Another - as many as 35 T-shirts, 50 handkerchiefs, fifty pairs of winter and summer socks and one pair of summer boots.

For reliability, Gorin wrote out false invoices for already retired servicemen, but the forgery became known anyway. At the trial, the head of the clothing service of the rear said that the property had fallen into disrepair in the warehouse due to improper storage conditions. He was allegedly afraid to write it off officially, because, in his opinion, a check would begin - why did he have such poor storage conditions, and therefore he decided to simply fake invoices. The verdict was soft - 25 thousand rubles of a court fine.

And the former head of the clothing service of the rear of the engineering unit in Murom (Vladimir region), senior lieutenant Ilgiz Akhmetov, was less fortunate - when Russia put forward its ultimatum to NATO at the end of 2021, he was sentenced to a suspended prison term of two years. He took out military equipment on a truck.

"We'll shoot when we get weapons." The mobilized Russians were left without equipment and without training
"Chill out". Russian command faces unprecedented criticism amid setbacks in Ukraine and mobilization
“Fuck us Kherson, I’m not going to die for it”: protests, arson of military registration and enlistment offices and chaos with conscription. How is mobilization going in Russia
Sometimes they come back. Why some mobilized Russians were allowed to go home
In the spring of 2018, Akhmetov drove the Ural to the warehouse and loaded 209 summer berets into it. The shoes went to his friend in the Nizhny Novgorod region - allegedly to cover a debt. Akhmetov got a taste of it and on another occasion took out another 100 pairs. To hide the shortage, Akhmetov forged an act of write-off of two hundred pairs of shoes, indicating that they were so trampled by the soldiers that it was no longer possible to wear them.

These two sentences are just the latest examples of how Russian servicemen have been stealing uniforms, shoes and other items from their own army for years. Over the past eight years (Russian propaganda used this figure in the sacred phrase "Where have you been for eight years?"), garrison military courts have issued at least 558 sentences for the loss of property from clothing stores, the BBC calculated based on data from the State Audit Office "Pravosudie" .

Skip the Podcast and continue reading.
Podcast
What was it?
What was it?
We quickly, simply and clearly explain what happened, why it is important and what will happen next.

episodes
End of Story Podcast
This problem would have remained on the periphery of public interest if Russia had not started a war with Ukraine, and then mobilization. It was the mobilization that showed that the Russian army cannot even dress its soldiers. Relatives of the mobilized buy them the same berets, balaclavas, socks, backpacks, uniforms, as well as bulletproof vests, first aid kits, night vision devices.

“It’s still not clear to me where the one and a half million kits that were stored at the personnel reception points have gone. Why are there problems with uniforms, with something else? No one is going to explain this in any way!”, A supporter of the war wrote in his Telegram reserve lieutenant general and State Duma deputy Andrey Gurulev. Then he, together with his colleague Vasily Piskarev, sent a letter to Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov - to find out how it happened that the budget had been allocating money for years, but there was nothing in the army.

For an answer to this question, the BBC turned to the materials of the state information system "Justice".

How they stole on the eve of the war
There are many ways to steal property, says a military journalist and a former active officer of the Russian Armed Forces himself (he asked for anonymity). For example, you can forge statements or write off good things from storage, citing the fact that they were destroyed by mold, he says.

“Another popular way is to shift it to the next financially responsible one, they put a classmate of mine like that. He came to the unit, signed the statements, and then went through an inventory and revealed a shortage. He went to prison,” recalls the BBC interlocutor.

Little things have always been stolen in the army - for example, like two conscripts from a motorized rifle regiment in the city of Klintsy, Bryansk region, Vladimir Morzhakov and Yegor Medvedev.

Графика "Как воровали с вещевых складов"
They were called up in the summer of 2021. It is not known how good soldiers they were, but one fine day Morzhakov and Medvedev climbed into the clothing warehouse of their own unit and stole clothes from there.

The gates to the warehouse were locked, but the gap between the leaves was so wide that the friends were able to bend one of the gates. Medvedev climbed inside, and Morzhakov remained, as they say, "on the lookout." Soon his friend appeared with things - two caps, a pair of berets and sports sneakers, three sets of underwear and four "Army of Russia" sports jackets. In March 2022, when Russia had already invaded Ukraine, they mailed these jackets to their relatives. But soon, when they were caught stealing, they hurriedly called and asked to be sent back.

Both were also sentenced to small court fines under the "Theft" article.

Two caps and a pair of jackets, which motorized riflemen from the Bryansk region pulled out of the warehouse, cannot be compared with the scale on which their colleagues in the "second army of the world" have been stealing in recent years.

In the fall of 2021, the foreman of one of the motorized rifle military units of the Altai Territory, Evgeny Medvedev, was appointed responsible for the training of newly arrived conscripts. He was instructed to give them the necessary uniforms. Medvedev came to the warehouse for warm jackets for a whole company (106 people), but only half of them reported to his soldiers. The remaining 50 jackets he took out of the unit and sold, for which he was eventually sentenced to a fine of 200 thousand rubles under the article "Assignment or embezzlement."

Мобилизованные в столовой военной части в Ростове-на-Дону
PHOTOGRAPHER,ARKADY BUDNITSKY/ANADOLU AGENCY
photo caption,
Mobilized in the dining room of a military unit in Rostov-on-Don - these were able to dress and feed

In the Novosibirsk region, it was not some foreman who ended up in the dock, but the whole head of the food and clothing service of the rear from the air defense unit stationed in the city of Ob. In those days, when the Russian army was still near Kyiv, the Novosibirsk Garrison Court dealt with how Captain Vladimir Zaitsev, together with the head of the clothing warehouse, warrant officer Alexei Churyukanov, systematically traded in the property entrusted to them.

The range of goods sold is impressive. For example, on April 17, 2019, they removed from the territory of the unit 60 field summer suits with the same number of caps, 50 sets of underwear and 20 pairs of berets. There were so many things that they used an official KAMAZ, which was driven by a driver from the same unit.

They took out not only uniforms, shoes, but even threads, toilet paper, 50 thousand paper envelopes, fax rollers, 36 thousand transparent "files" for A4 sheets, bottles of liquid soap. The total value of the property sold by them amounted to 1 million rubles, but the inventory showed that the warehouse did not have enough things for 1.5 million rubles.

Captain Dmitry Nikitin from the Novosibirsk Higher Military Command School helped them sell socks, berets and toilet paper. He brought the stolen goods in a KAMAZ truck to his garage at the Siberia cooperative and met civilian buyers there.

All three were sentenced to court fines.

The head of the food and clothing service of one of the Moscow Region units, Captain Sergei Pudikov, drove the stolen property to the garage, but on a personal pickup truck. During one trip, several bags of things were placed in the back of a pickup truck, and in total, in the period from 2016 to 2018, he took out about 80 bags with various clothes and shoes from the unit.

When he first took military property (140 raincoats and 30 shirts), his subordinate asked where he was taking him. Pudikov replied that he would simply change the dimensions in the warehouse and return it. "There are no sizes for the exchange yet," he later replied until he was detained. Given the amount of property removed and sold, he was sentenced to six years in prison and stripped of his captain's rank.

How they stole in previous years
Judicial statistics show that in recent years the number of criminal cases on the facts of theft or embezzlement of property from clothing warehouses has been stably kept at the level of 70-100 cases per year.

In the same way, property disappeared from clothing warehouses 10 years ago.

В рамках мобилизации призывают в том числе людей 40+
PHOTOGRAPHER,ARKADY BUDNITSKY/ANADOLU AGENCY
photo caption,
As part of the mobilization, people aged 40+ are also called. If they served before, they will find that little has changed in some areas in the Russian army.

At the end of the 2000s, in one of the parts of the Novosibirsk region, an emergency reserve warehouse was checked. A real "hole" was discovered - there were almost 2000 duffel bags, 200 pairs of boots, 1200 summer suits, 300 bowlers and 100 flasks. Ensign Andrey Zorin was in charge of the warehouse, who, in response to the question where all this stuff was, only shrugged his shoulders: they say that the warehouse sealed itself, there were no cases of hacking, but conscript soldiers worked on it, whom he monitored poorly, and they and could take out the property.

As a result, in 2010, the court found Zorin guilty of "negligence" and fined him 30 thousand rubles, that is, about a thousand dollars at the exchange rate of that time. After his dismissal from military service, Zorin went to work as a security guard.

But in 2007-2009, the head of the clothing service of one of the military units of Abakan, Dmitry Drozdov, took a little for personal needs - either two sleeping bags, or a pair of trousers or boots. Although once he could not resist and took out 45 pairs of boots from the unit at once. His court fine amounted to 60 thousand rubles.

In the same 2009, in the Far East, it was decided to disband one of the Pacific Fleet's clothing warehouses. His boss, Aleksey Valevsky, took advantage of this moment and, using false documents, instructed to take part of the property to another warehouse with a simplified security regime, from where his acquaintance slowly picked up things in a private car for six months. The list of stolen property includes five thousand vests, four thousand pairs of boots, two and a half thousand fur mittens. Valevsky justified himself in court that he did it in the interests of his superiors for the sake of a promotion, but he did not name names and went to a colony-settlement for 4.5 years.

With the same scope, they stole property from a warehouse in one of the parts of the Ulyanovsk region in 2015-2016. In total, 2,000 pairs of shorts and T-shirts, 13,000 pairs of socks, as well as 200 sleeping bags were taken out of it - the same ones that the mobilized are now asked to buy at their own expense. A MAZ truck was used to export so many things, and the documents were forged: for example, surpluses were artificially formed in the warehouse due to the fact that the servicemen of the unit were given less clothes than indicated in the documents.

In the same way, the captain of one of the air force units in the Irkutsk region, Igor Chebotarev, tried to hide the theft, but went further and demanded that not only real, but also fictional military personnel be entered into the statements. Things were taken out of the unit on KAMAZ for several trips: the captain himself claimed that there were only 15 bags, but the driver said that each time the truck was full to the top and the military unit lost 50-60 bags per trip.

In 2014, Chebotarev was sentenced to a real prison term.

How other property is stolen
From the Russian military units, not only clothes with shoes are missing, but also protective equipment.

Now the mobilized are forced to buy bulletproof vests, which are sorely lacking in the Russian army. But it could have been more if, for example, a sergeant of a tank brigade from the Nizhny Novgorod region, Ivan Andreev, had not stolen almost 50 pieces from a unit in 2017. In order not to be noticed at the checkpoint, he either demanded that his subordinates throw out army property through the window, or take it out through the main entrance on a stretcher.

Проводы мобилизованных в Москве
PHOTOGRAPHER,SEFA KARACAN/ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES
photo caption,
Relatives of the mobilized often have to use their own money to buy for them much of what they need at the front.

And in one of the companies of a motorized rifle unit from the Buryat city of Kyakhta in 2018, 20 bulletproof vests and the same number of armored helmets disappeared. While the company commander was thinking what to do, foreman Artem Akimov confidentially told him that he had an acquaintance who could sell the same "armor" cheaply so that the authorities would not notice the loss. The officer transferred 40 thousand rubles to him, and then it is not clear whether Akimov immediately decided to deceive the commander and, having assured that he had returned the bulletproof vests to the warehouse, kept the money for himself, or his friend suddenly decided that he could sell at a higher price, and the deal fell through. As a result, after some time, the commander found out that the bulletproof vests had not been bought, and complained about the fraud on the part of the subordinate to the military investigative authorities.

The military manages to take out from the parts and more significant property.

Even pro-Kremlin military correspondents write about the terrible supply of fuel and lubricants. The amount of abandoned Russian equipment is often explained precisely by this - the equipment simply has nothing to ride on. This happens, among other things, because the theft of fuel and lubricants is a very common phenomenon.

Aleksey Kudelya, a senior logistics technician for one of the parts of the Altai Territory, in 2019 systematically stole diesel fuel on a GAZ service truck - he took out two or three barrels, and as a result deprived his native army of 2.5 thousand liters of diesel fuel. Some he managed to sell, some he kept on his site outside the city. In addition, he stole almost two thousand tons of fodder oats and various spare parts.

Theft of fuel is a fairly common crime among military personnel of tank units. A military expert who monitored the condition of tank units says that the money allocated for the storage and operation of tanks in some units reached only insignificant amounts for years, remaining somewhere at the level of the generals. “Those that did reach were first stolen at a lower level, and those that remained were spent only on painting tanks. Fuel and lubricants were also stolen, so the tanks didn’t go anywhere for years. When they finally broke down and fell into disrepair, they began to take them away and valuable equipment. Therefore, it is not surprising that Russian tankers simply cannot conduct offensive campaigns."

This can also be seen in court decisions. In 2020, Sergey Novikov, acting head of the storage department for one of the units in Buryatia, asked his subordinates to remove the frequency stabilizers from 38 T-72 tanks - they say they need repairs. And then he stuffed them into a bag, took them out of the unit and sold them for 200 thousand rubles. The income could be a little more, but he lost one stabilizer somewhere.

As a result, 37 stabilizers were sent by courier service to Chelyabinsk to the final buyer, who tried to sell them to Armenia, but the cargo was delayed at the border.

Мобилизованные в Крыму
PHOTOGRAPHER,AFP
photo caption,
Russia-annexed Crimea is also mobilized

And the commander of the combat storage base in the Voronezh region, Leonid Goykhman, decided to make money by selling two new engines for military equipment. The scheme was quite cunning: at the end of 2018, the buyer brought two old engines, which were put in a warehouse of armored vehicles instead of new ones. For this, Goykhman received half a million rubles, of which he gave 50 thousand to the head of the warehouse, who was aware of the deal.

However, other military personnel were also aware - one even cleaned these old engines so that they did not look completely broken. And when the check came to the warehouse, Goykhman forced his subordinates to force the place where the engines stood with other property so that the inspectors could not go there.

But the inspectors still got to this corner. Both - both the commander and the head of the warehouse - were sentenced to court fines: the court took into account that they had combat experience and medals.

How the military was judged by economic articles
Economic crimes are a disease that has accompanied the Russian army for all eight years since 2014.

"It's still easy to steal in the military, and there are different levels of theft," says a military journalist and reserve officer who asked to remain anonymous. One level is to take a couple of things home, the other is to take them out of the KAMAZ unit with sacks full of uniforms, the third is stealing billions, he adds.

On average, over the past eight years, about a thousand servicemen a year were caught stealing, and often it was about stealing a mobile phone from their colleague (data from the State Antimonopoly Service "Pravosudie").

More than 12 thousand convictions for fraud, and in 2018 and 2019 there were more than two thousand convictions a year.

Finally, over 700 contract soldiers, including commanders, were convicted of embezzlement.

One of the problems is the lack of modern property accounting systems, that is, warehouse software, says a military journalist. “There is not even a record of fuel and lubricants, without which it is impossible to fight: everything is still recorded in a notebook, and when there is a notebook, it is difficult to verify what is written in the notebook in the unit and what is in the district,” he gives an example.

“Everyone is interested in the least transparency, they don’t fight against theft,” says the source of the BBC. And judicial statistics most likely reflect only the tip of this corruption iceberg.

In recent years, the transparency of the Russian army has steadily declined, and by 2022 the army has become a completely closed system, says Ilya Shumanov, general director of Transparency International - Russia (the organization is recognized as a foreign agent in the Russian Federation). Public procurements are not public, income declarations are not published, and for anti-corruption investigations on the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, one can become a foreign agent or even be accused of treason, he lists. The main argument for the closure of information in all cases is the same - secrecy.

All this ultimately contributes to the fact that theft and corruption at least does not become less, Shumanov notes.

Графика "Как судили военных по экономическим статьям"
"I'm not surprised [that there is nothing for the mobilized], because everything was stored in one place," ensign Andrey Zorin from Novosibirsk, who was sentenced under the "negligence" article to a court fine 10 years ago, told the BBC. He was in charge of the emergency stockpile, but, according to him, he did not count the property, and he was accused of stealing his predecessors.

“Everything was conveyed in words. I was on vacation, what happened there [in the warehouse] is unknown, and then - both, “robe” [criminal case under the article “Negligence”]. I was fired, five years were not enough until my pension, I don’t have an apartment, I stayed homeless. I won’t go to serve,” 44-year-old Zorin said emotionally.

"Did the agenda come to you?" asked the BBC correspondent.

"Even if the summons comes, I will not go. I am offended by the army, why should I serve, for what? I served you, and they framed me."

If Zorin is suddenly called up and goes, he may well face the same situation as others mobilized for the war with Ukraine, whose relatives now buy not only bulletproof vests, but even shoes. “It cost us 30,000 to put on clothes, berets, uniforms, unloading, socks, shorts, a backpack. Separately, pills, food,” complained, for example, the wife of one of those mobilized on VKontakte.

And the Agency publication posted on its Telegram channel a video from the village of Cheryomushki near Omsk, which shows that the mobilized were placed in tents with potbelly stoves, without electricity. They were not given any equipment, and the temperature outside dropped below zero. Another photo from the Omsk region in the Agency channel shows a hangar with dozens of beds. The publication claimed that some of the mobilized were placed in the 242nd training center of the Airborne Forces in the village of Svetly, in a hangar for 1000 people, and volunteers announced a fundraiser for equipment: from sleeping bags and mattresses to thermal imagers and quadrocopters.

The same situation used to be with clothes and equipment for those mobilized in the self-proclaimed DPR and LPR, where relatives bought everything - from berets to night vision devices.

"We steal for the homeland," Eduard Basurin, a representative of the "People's Militia of the DPR" Eduard Basurin, said recently on the air of the Rossiya channel, obviously meaning that he is still "fighting" for the homeland.