The Times - UK (2021-12-22)

38 Wednesday December 22 2021 | the times

Wo r l d

Bribes to government officials who
oversee the awarding of state contracts
in Russia are equivalent to roughly one
third of the country’s entire national
budget revenue, researchers have said.
Kickbacks by Russian companies to
public procurement officials total about
£67 billion every year, RBC media said,
citing research by the Higher School of
Economics in Moscow. The sum is
higher than Russia’s combined annual
spending on education or healthcare.
Researchers who polled Russian
companies found that 71 per cent had
encountered demands for kickbacks
while bidding for state contracts.

Alexei Navalny, the imprisoned

opposition leader, has exposed corrup-

tion in state tenders and contracts. One

case included an order for £40,000

worth of mink coats that authorities in

St Petersburg insisted were for patients

on a psychiatric ward. The contract was

annulled after an outcry.

Navalny’s FBK anti-corruption orga-

nisation was banned this year by Russia

as an “extremist” group. Officials said

the FBK was guilty of “discrediting the

state authorities and their policies”.

Vladimir Milov, an advisor to Naval-

ny, said: “The fight against corruption is

classified as extremism in Russia

because it is the basis of Putin’s state.”

The Higher School of Economics,

which was ranked this year as one of the

Russia
Marc Bennetts

Russian officials are paid ‘£67bn in bribes’ every year

Twenty-eight per cent declined to an-

swer. On average, kickbacks were

about one fifth of the value of the gov-

ernment contract.

The researchers said that companies

often had no choice but to offer finan-

cial incentives to officials. They said:

“It’s more profitable for a supplier to

collude than to work on unique or inno-

vative goods, works or services.”

Officials have vowed to crack down.

The prosecutor-general’s office identi-

fied more than 150,000 public procure-

ment violations last year and more than

40,000 people were convicted.

Critics say corruption in state con-

tracts affects everything from Ros-

cosmos, the space agency, to Kremlin-

approved children’s summer camps.

world’s top 25 universities by the Times

Higher Education magazine, has long

been seen as a bastion of liberal ideas.

However, it was criticised last month

after firing two professors who were

said to have criticised Russia’s judicial

system. It also cut ties in 2019 with

Doxa, a student newspaper that sup-

ported the opposition.

Four of Doxa’s journalists are under

house arrest after being accused of en-

couraging children to attend protests in

support of Navalny. If convicted they

face up to two years in prison.

A former FSB intelligence agency of-

ficial has been appointed to oversee

security at the university. Sergei Rozh-

kov is reported to have been a senior

FSB official in the Belgorod region.

The French president’s wife is to sue the

extreme right-wingers responsible for

spreading the conspiracy theory that

she was born a man.

Brigitte Macron’s lawyer, Maître Jean

Ennochi, said he would file a legal

complaint alleging that she had been

libelled by the authors of the false

rumours.

The fake news is being spread by ex-

tremists close to QAnon, a movement

that claims the US is in the grip of a

cabal of Satan-worshipping paedo-

philes. The rumours were started by

extremists so marginal that even

France’s best-known far-right website

France

Adam Sage Paris

Macron’s wife

The United States and Britain have sent
experts to Kiev to counter any Russian
cyberattack on Ukraine’s power grid,
banking system and other key infra-
structure before a potential invasion.
US intelligence believes the Kremlin
could order a hack to make President
Zelensky of Ukraine appear incompe-
tent and undermine his authority, The
New York Times reported.
American and British officials de-
clined to comment on how many
experts had been sent to Ukraine. A
British government spokeswoman said
the help was purely defensive.
A member of the US Senate intelli-
gence committee told the newspaper
that if Russia attacked Ukraine the first
shots would be fired in cyberspace.
“I don’t think there’s a slightest doubt
that if there is an invasion or other kind
of incursion into Ukraine, it will start
with cyber,” Senator Angus King said.
Russia has massed about 100,000
troops near Ukraine’s borders. It denies
it is planning to invade but has demand-
ed that Nato withdraw its forces from
eastern and central Europe.
The Kremlin says Nato’s eastwards
expansion poses a threat to Russian
national security, an allegation rejected
by the western military alliance.
President Putin said yesterday that
tensions had been caused by Nato and
its allies. “What is happening now, ten-
sions that are building up in Europe, is
their fault every step of the way,” he told
military top brass. “If our western col-
leagues continue this clearly aggressive
stance, we will take appropriate mili-
tary-technical measures in response
and react harshly to hostile steps.”
Critics accuse the Kremlin of using
hackers — either intelligence agents or
cybercriminals — to target enemies.
More than 230,000 people were left
without electricity in western Ukraine
in 2015 after a cyberattack disabled
power stations. Hackers seized control
of the computers, plunging entire dis-
tricts into darkness during the run-up
to the new year holidays. Russia denied
any involvement. Another cyberattack

Western experts sent to

counter Putin’s cyberwar

led to a smaller blackout in parts of Kiev

in 2016.

The US also recently sent Defence

Department analysts to gauge

Ukraine’s air and missile defence needs.

The Pentagon confirmed that the

group had returned but gave no details.

The United States has allocated

$2.5 billion to support Kiev’s armed

forces since 2014, when Russia annexed

Crimea from Ukraine and provided

military support for a nascent pro-

Moscow separatist movement in east-

ern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

Last week Moscow demanded a ban

on the deployment of Nato troops and

hardware to states that joined the

western military alliance after 1997,

unless approved by the Kremlin. Were

Nato to agree to that, it would have to

remove troops and missile defence sys-

tems from Poland and Romania and

withdraw forces from Estonia, Latvia

and Lithuania.

Russia also wants Nato to retract a

promise that Ukraine and Georgia will

one day be offered paths to member-

ship. Sergei Rybakov, the deputy Rus-

sian foreign minister, has said that a re-

fusal could lead to Russia deploying nu-

clear missiles to Nato’s eastern borders.

State television has fuelled the row,

warning viewers that Russia could be

“on the eve of war with Nato”. Putin, a

former KGB agent, told his military

chiefs that Nato’s expansion in the

1990s and 2000s was the result of “eu-

phoria” in western countries after their

“so-called victory in the Cold War”.

The Kremlin has accused Nato of

failing to honour verbal assurances

provided in 1990 in exchange for drop-

ping its opposition to the reunification

of Germany. Nato has insisted that it

did not promise Russia that it would not

expand eastwards.

Gleb Pavlovsky, a former Kremlin

adviser, said that Putin’s demands were

an attempt to shake up the global order.

“[But] nobody wants to build a world

order with Putin because they don’t

trust him,” he told TV Rain, an online

opposition channel. He summed up

Putin’s reaction as: “Oh, you don’t trust

me? Then we will blow up your world,

and there will be no world order.”

Ukraine
Marc Bennetts Moscow Kremlin says US will deploy

hypersonic missiles in Ukraine

Behind the story

P

resident

Putin has

accused the

United States

of planning

to deploy hypersonic

weapons to Ukraine

(Michael Evans

writes).

“We are extremely

concerned that

elements of the US

global missile defence

system are being

deployed next to

Russia,” he told a

meeting of military

leaders yesterday.

Putin, 69, said the

flight time of Nato

missiles to Moscow

would drop to five

minutes if the US

deployed hypersonic

weapons to

neighbouring

Ukraine. He has

previously compared

the scenario to Russia

deploying missiles to

Canada or Mexico.

He acknowledged

that the US was

lagging behind

Moscow in the race to

develop hypersonic

missiles but said that

it was inevitable that

Washington would

manage to put them

into production in the

near

future. “No matter if

the [US] tests are

successful or

unsuccessful, we

roughly understand

when they will

appear. And they will

put them in Ukraine,”

Putin said.

“What the US is

doing in Ukraine is on

our doorstep. And

they must understand

that we simply have

nowhere to retreat

further.”

Russia plans to

deploy its Zircon

hypersonic missiles

early next year. The

missiles, hailed as

“invincible” by Putin,

can reach 6,140mph

with a range of up to

600 miles and can be

armed with a

conventional or

nuclear warhead.

The Pentagon’s

hypersonic missile

programme has

suffered three

setbacks in a row. The

test of one of the most

advanced systems, the

US Air Force’s air-

launched rapid

response weapon, had

to be aborted after a

technical fault

prevented the

prototype missile

from being launched

from a B-52H

Stratofortress

bomber. There had

been two previous

failed tests in July and

April.

The sense of

urgency about

developing weapons

capable of hitting

targets in minutes has

been heightened by

the apparent success

by China and Russia

in testing hypersonic

missiles that can

carry both nuclear

and conventional

warheads.

China shocked the

Pentagon in August

when it carried out a

test of a rocket-

launched glide vehicle

that circled the globe

in low orbit before

descending at

hypersonic speed,

missing a land-based

target by about 20

miles. Had it been

carrying a nuclear

warhead, a “miss” on

that scale would be

irrelevant. The US is

only developing non-

nuclear systems.