Page 23 - RusRPTJan21
P. 23
chimes with a whole series of recent incidents and initiatives being pushed by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.
Whereas Mishustin’s predecessor Dmitry Medvedev had an at-best awkward relationship with former General Prosecutor Yuri Chaika, the Mishustin-Krasnov partnership may prove more productive. And that could mean serious progress addressing corruption – albeit up to a point.
The Genprok
Krasnov’s appointment at the start of 2020 was an interesting move. Chaika, had served in place for fourteen years in which progress in addressing corruption was often tempered by the enthusiastic prosecution of political cases. Furthermore, there was a steady stream of rumours about his and his family’s improprieties (not least in one of Alexei Navalny’s investigative blockbusters). In part as a result, many even within the Procuracy had little time for him – the first time I head Pussy Riot’s own contribution to Chaika’s legend, it is worth noting, was because a staffer at the University of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation sent me a link.
Krasnov is a rather different figure, with a rather different reputation. In his career, he has been involved in a number of high-profile cases, including investigating the ultra-nationalist BORN group and corruption at the Vostochny cosmodrome, which cost the state billions of rubles. He is known as an extremely able investigator who actually investigates, and follows the evidence wherever it leads. This helps explain why he was the initial lead on the assassination of Boris Nemtsov in 2015, which was a genuine shock to the Kremlin, and also why – as soon as the Chechen connection became evident – he was replaced with another investigator considered more politically amenable.
His position ought not to be caricatured – Krasnov has built a career within a deeply compromised legal-political system and he is not a rebel looking to bring the system down, but he also appears genuinely committed to doing what he can within that system’s constraints. He has, for example, dutifully recognised Vladimir Putin’s current pseudo-historical mission to sanctify a certain mythologised take on Soviet victory in the Great Patriotic War and proposed further criminalisation of questioning the genocide of the peoples of the USSR. He does what he must.
The grafters
Russia is a kleptocracy, but it is not just a kleptocracy, and the challenge and also the progress is to be found in the nuance. It is useful to think of corruption at three levels.
There is the predatory street-level bribe-taking or rather bribe-demanding, which used to be such a feature of Soviet life and continued well into post-Soviet times. While not altogether gone – it resurfaces in times of hardship and also is experienced disproportionately by marginal and vulnerable communities such as migrant workers – it is vastly less of an issue now. The days when GAI traffic police would routinely pull over drivers for a quick shake-down, or in which access to state medical care might depend on
23 RUSSIA Country Report January 2021 www.intellinews.com
