El Gobernador Ladrón: Corrupción, Guerra y el Poder en Rusia

The money he stole was earmarked for building fortifications on the Ukraine border.

This is wartime money.

Defense spending.

The optics of that are extraordinary, even by Russian standards.

A ver, el dinero para la guerra desaparece.

Let's think about this, money for the war disappears.

Esto es muy malo.

This is very bad.

Very bad, and also deeply revealing.

Because it raises a question that military analysts have been asking for three years.

If a governor can steal defense funds from a border region during an active war, how pervasive is this kind of theft across the entire Russian military machine?

Mira, los soldados rusos a veces no tienen comida.

Look, Russian soldiers sometimes have no food.

No tienen equipos.

They have no equipment.

This has been documented extensively.

In the early months of the war, Russian units were running out of fuel, running out of food.

There were intercepted phone calls of soldiers complaining they hadn't eaten in days.

And there are credible reports that procurement officials were selling military equipment on the black market.

Es que la corrupción mata a los soldados.

The thing is, corruption kills soldiers.

No solo roba dinero.

It does not only steal money.

No, you're absolutely right about that.

This is a point that gets lost in the abstract discussion of corruption.

It is not just accounting.

When you steal from a military procurement budget, real people die because they lack equipment.

That is not a metaphor.

La verdad es que Rusia tiene este problema hace muchos siglos.

The truth is that Russia has had this problem for many centuries.

Centuries.

I mean, the Crimean War in the 1850s, Russia's catastrophic performance against Britain and France, historians have pointed to military corruption as a central cause.

Supply chains looted, officers selling provisions, generals who reported phantom soldiers to collect their salaries.

This is not a new story.

Bueno, en la Segunda Guerra Mundial también hay corrupción en Rusia.

Well, in the Second World War there is also corruption in Russia.

Even in the war they call the Great Patriotic War, the sacred conflict, there was enormous theft of military supplies.

Stalin executed people for it.

Brutally and often unjustly.

But even fear of death didn't stop it.

That tells you something about how deep the system runs.

A ver, en Rusia el estado y la corrupción son la misma cosa.

Let's be clear, in Russia the state and corruption are the same thing.

The extraordinary thing is that scholars actually have a term for this.

They call it a kleptocracy, rule by thieves.

But it's more nuanced than that.

It's a system where the lines between public office and private enrichment are deliberately blurred.

The blurring is the point.

It creates loyalty.

Mira, si tú robas con el jefe, no puedes hablar contra él.

Look, if you steal with the boss, you cannot speak against him.

That is an elegant way to put it.

You are bound to the system by your own complicity.

You can't blow the whistle without implicating yourself.

Putin didn't invent this, but he perfected it.

Every oligarch, every governor, every general is compromised.

And therefore loyal, or at least quiet.

Es que Smirnov no es especial.

The thing is, Smirnov is not special.

Él es normal en ese sistema.

He is normal in that system.

He's probably average, honestly.

And that's the darkly comic aspect of this case.

He's not being prosecuted because he stole.

He's being prosecuted because Ukraine embarrassed Putin and someone had to take the fall.

If Ukraine had never crossed into Kursk, Smirnov might still be governor.

Bueno, la guerra cambia las reglas.

Well, war changes the rules.

Ahora los errores son peligrosos.

Now mistakes are dangerous.

Right.

And we've seen this pattern.

General Sergei Surovikin, who commanded Russian forces in Syria and was briefly in charge in Ukraine, was removed after the Wagner mutiny in 2023 and essentially disappeared.

The war is creating its own political casualties inside Russia.

La verdad es que Putin tiene miedo ahora.

The truth is that Putin is afraid now.

El sistema es frágil.

The system is fragile.

Look, I'd push back slightly on the word fragile.

The system has survived extraordinary shocks.

The Wagner mutiny, which for about 36 hours looked like it could topple everything, fizzled out.

But the Smirnov case does suggest something: the war is straining the system in ways that even Putin can't fully control.

A ver, en España también tenemos corrupción política.

Let's see, in Spain we also have political corruption.

Pero es diferente.

But it is different.

I was going to ask you about that comparison.

How is it different?

Because from the outside, a corrupt politician is a corrupt politician.

Mira, en España los corruptos van a la cárcel por la ley.

Look, in Spain corrupt people go to prison because of the law.

No por el jefe.

Not because of the boss.

That distinction is everything.

Independent judiciary versus a judiciary that serves the executive.

In Russia, the court that convicted Smirnov does not operate independently.

It convicts who it is told to convict.

In a democracy, the rule of law can catch even powerful politicians, sometimes.

Es que en España, el juicio de Smirnov no es posible así.

The thing is, in Spain, a trial like Smirnov's is not possible like this.

I take your point.

So what does this mean going forward?

Because here's the thing that interests me most.

If the Russian state is this corrupt at the regional level, with defense funds being stolen on the literal front line, what does that tell us about Russia's capacity to sustain a long war?

Bueno, la guerra es muy cara.

Well, war is very expensive.

Y el dinero no llega al frente.

And the money does not reach the front.

Russia is spending roughly a third of its entire federal budget on defense right now.

That is an extraordinary number.

And if even a significant fraction of that is being siphoned off at every level, the actual military capability is much lower than the headline numbers suggest.

La verdad es que Rusia tiene muchos soldados.

The truth is that Russia has many soldiers.

Pero los soldados necesitan equipos.

But soldiers need equipment.

And boots.

And food.

And functioning artillery shells.

There have been credible reports that Russia has had to buy shells from North Korea precisely because domestic production is either insufficient or riddled with quality issues, because the people building them are also skimming from procurement.

Mira, el caso Smirnov es pequeño.

Look, the Smirnov case is small.

Pero muestra algo muy grande.

But it shows something very large.

One governor, one province, 14 years in prison.

But it is a window into a system.

And systems like this don't reform easily.

Putin can arrest Smirnov.

He cannot arrest the culture that produced Smirnov.

That culture is the system.

A ver, para los estudiantes, la palabra clave hoy es corrupción.

Let's see, for the students, the key word today is corruption.

Corrupción.

And here's the Spanish lesson hiding inside this geopolitical story.

The word comes from Latin, rumpere, to break.

Corruption literally means something that has been broken from within.

Which, honestly, is a pretty accurate description of what we've been talking about for the last fifteen minutes.

Bueno, Rusia no está rota.

Well, Russia is not broken.

Pero tiene muchos problemas internos.

But it has many internal problems.

And the extraordinary thing is that it keeps functioning despite them.

Russia is a place that has survived invasion, revolution, famine, and Stalin.

It is resilient in ways that are hard to explain from the outside.

But resilience and health are not the same thing.

I think that's where we leave it today.

Es que el gobernador ladrón es solo el principio de la historia.

The thing is, the thieving governor is only the beginning of the story.

He is.

Smirnov gets 14 years.

The system that made him gets to keep running.

Same as it ever was.

Thanks for listening, everyone.

Octavio, gracias, as always.

Mira, hasta la próxima.

Look, until next time.

Y aprende español bien, por favor.

And please learn Spanish properly.