Putin’s War Against Ukraine Increasing Corruption in Russia

Executive Summary:

• Corruption in Russia worsens the longer the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine continues because the war creates expanded opportunities for bribery and the state seizure and misallocation of assets.
• The Kremlin has generally sought to downplay the growth of corruption to conceal how the Putin regime exploits corruption to garner support from its beneficiaries and to prevent anger among Russians who do not benefit from corruption but are its victims.    
• The threat posed by corruption has become so large that in June, Moscow released data showing its increase, highlighting how corruption harms Putin’s war effort and erodes support for his regime.

Corruption has long been a problem in Russia, even under its most authoritarian leaders. Many senior Russian officials suggest that it can never be rooted out (Window on Eurasia, September 9, 2021, December 6, 2022; RBC, May 20). Even before his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Putin has wielded corruption to make his beneficiaries reliant on his regime and supportive of its goals (Window on Eurasia, September 9, 2021). Corruption is historically worse in wartime because people are willing to pay bribes to evade service or avoid being sent to the front lines (Prodolzhenie Sleduet, August 31, 2023; see EDM, October 10, 2024; Versia, June 25). Wartime also sees governments funneling money into military industries, creating new opportunities for businessmen and politicians to make vast and elaborate criminal schemes to siphon off money intended for military use (Vazhnie Istorii, February 17; RBC, June 16; Radio Svoboda, June 23).

Putin’s war in Ukraine is no exception. The longer it has continued, the worse corruption in Russia has become. The Kremlin has attempted to hide worsening corruption by hyping selected anti-corruption legal cases, though it seldom punishes those close to the Kremlin or willing to fight in Ukraine. Moscow has obscured worsening overall corruption by limiting the kinds of bribes ordinary Russians have to pay for government services such as getting a passport or medical care (Kholod, August 16, 2023; Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, December 9, 2024; The Insider, March 25; Radio Svoboda, June 23). The Kremlin does not want to call attention to how the Putin regime facilitated the increase of corruption to ensure that those who profit will support the system and its war against Ukraine (Versia, April 1, 2024). Moscow is especially wary of backlash to corruption because it helped power the popularity of the late opposition figure Aleksei Navalny, Putin’s most serious domestic challenge to date (see EDM, February 20, 21, 2024).

In response to the threat posed by anger about corruption, Moscow has acknowledged it in limited terms. The Kremlin released extensive new data showing just how serious the problem of corruption has become since Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine (Vazhnie Istorii, February 17; RBC, June 16; Radio Svoboda, June 23). Because independent research, which tracks the rise of corruption—including individual trials and other data—indicates that the Kremlin’s data understates the problem, their release may seem risky. The Kremlin has likely calculated that many Russians will accept official corruption figures as more accurate than independent assessments because they are perceived as being imbued with government authority. The Kremlin’s acknowledgment of some degree of corruption is confirmation of the dramatic increase in wartime corruption in Russia.

The official figures released by the Prosecutor General’s Office last week call attention to a disturbing trend (TASS, December 9, 2024; RBC, June 19; Prosecutor Data RBC, accessed June 25). Russian authorities identified 15,438 crimes classed as corruption during the first three months of 2025. This figure is 24 percent higher than the same period a year ago, much higher before 2022, and represents a greater rate of increase than between 2023 and 2024, when such crimes rose by only 5.7 percent. Corruption crimes also increased as a share of all crimes. In the first quarter of this year, corruption crimes accounted for 3.2 percent of all crimes, up from 2.6 percent in the same quarter of 2024. Moreover, bribe charges between January and March rose from 7,300 in 2024 to 9,418 in 2025. The Prosecutor General’s Office claimed that the share of corruption charges involving small bribes has decreased, although it did not provide statistics to support this point. This claim suggests that the number of other crimes classified as corruption, including large bribes, has increased relative to small bribes over the past year. Large bribes typically involve senior officials or major businessmen, rather than ordinary Russians. Russian prosecutors, however, have only secured convictions in 5,478 of these cases (Prosecutor Data RBC, accessed June 25).

Bribery cases continue to attract the most attention, especially cases concerning bribes paid to evade military service or improve a soldier’s circumstances. Some Russian soldiers in Ukraine are paying bribes to commanders for leave or to avoid being sent to the front (Vazhnie Istorii, February 17). These crimes, however, pale in comparison to those committed by higher-ups in business, the military, and government, who siphon off government spending intended for the military or other regime purposes, according to experts such as Alyona Vandysheva from Transparency International Russia (Radio Svoboda, June 23). These forms of corruption involve significantly more money, causing greater harm to the government and the Russian people (Kommersant, June 9).

The government seizing businesses and then handing control of those companies to those in Putin’s inner circle is another growing form of corruption. Between 2022 and March 17, 2025, the Kremlin seized companies with assets worth more than two percent of Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2024, approximately $32.7 billion (Novaya Gazeta, March 25). In the first 2.5 months of 2025, Moscow nationalized companies with assets worth two-thirds of what it seized in all of 2024, a figure that is likely to continue increasing as Russia’s war against Ukraine demands more resources (Novaya Gazeta, March 25). This “new form of corruption” is not reflected in the Prosecutor General’s statistics, but it is more significant than crimes such as bribery because it affects a far greater number of Russians. The Russian people are often unaware of corruption schemes at the federal government level unless the Kremlin decides to make an example of some of those involved (The Insider, March 25).

Some observers suggest that the precipitous increase in corruption in Russia because of its war against Ukraine means Moscow cannot win, or even that the Putin regime cannot survive regardless of the war’s outcome. Vladimir Pastukhov, a Russian analyst based in London, has argued that “the Putin regime is not capable of standing up to the tensions a long war will produce” because it relies so heavily on corruption to prevent it from having to employ even greater amounts of repression than Stalin to keep its elites in line (Telegram/@v_pastukhov, January 10, 2024; Kasparov.ru, January 11, 2024). Despite this prediction potentially being overstated, Moscow’s recent publication of data on the explosive growth of corruption in Russia suggests another trajectory. Putin may conclude that he must reduce corruption or face disaster, but that he can only do so by increasing repression to compensate.