Perun
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2022–2023
57:21 · 2.7M views · May 29, 2022
Perun analyzes how corruption and theft in defence procurement hollowed out the Russian military before its invasion of Ukraine. It explains the mechanics of graft and how it degrades capability.
Recommended as a long but insightful explanation of how corruption works inside institutions.
5 comments from Hacker News
The paperwork is an attempt(usually misguided) to stop the corruption. The idea is that if you have to account and document all actions you will have act in the proscribed manner and not in a way that benefits you. This usually fails for the reason you posted. I am not really sure how you are supposed to stop corruption once it gets rooted in your society. It is a vile and subversive menace that turns every one into a criminal, preying on their fellow man. A very unpleasant environment to live in. The best article on corruption I have seen.(if you have time for an hour long power point presentation ) this video
> Maybe but those are big assumptions. Does the USA inspect it's missiles in the middle of nowhere? The US almost certainly does, but the Russians might not. They've been shown to have neglected routine maintenance in ways that caused very critical problems for their military (e.g. they lost a lot of expensive advanced vehicles, because their unmaintained knock-off tires disintegrated). Both these videos are long, but they had a lot of interesting ideas and insight on this topic: this video [specifically 33:10] (How Corruption Destroys Armies - Theft, Graft, and Russian failure in Ukraine) [LINK] (All Bling, no Basics - Why Ukraine has embarrassed the Russian Military)
Yeah, I edited it out because I knew discussion would rathole on whether or not the U.S. military is effective, while the larger point I'm making is about institutions (in general) and their ability to change. Russia's performance in the Ukraine war is a good example: they have all the war materials [1], but they suck at waging war because the institutions are so corrupt that they suck at waging war [2]. [1] [LINK] [2] this video
As the level of corruption grows, the organisation starts to stumble and eventually gets sued to dust. An interesting youtube on Russian corruption grew to such huge levels thatover 80% of the budget was diverted. Soldiers stole engines/tires/optics/fuel and so on and the invasion of Kiev failed. [LINK] this video
> My impression was that Russia's failures in Ukraine mostly stemmed from failures in their logistics and doctrine rather than their technology. Also lack of proper spending priorities: [LINK] And corruption: this video