Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 20 – When Ramzan
Kadyrov promised that Chechnya would help rebuild the economy of Crimea after
its absorption into the Russian Federation this week, most observers concluded
that he was just being his usual flamboyant self. But the truth is more
complicated and potentially more disturbing
As journalist Andrey Pertsev points
out on Slon.ru yesterday, Russian regions have been actively involved in funding
the unrecognized states, an arrangement that allows Moscow to do more without
attracting as much attention and even gives it when necessary a certain
deniability (slon.ru/russia/chernoe_krymskoe_kak_raskhoduyutsya_rossiyskie_sredstva_v_nepriznannykh_gosudarstvakh-1072324.xhtml).
But
of course it may have another consequence as well: such regional spending or
promises of spending are much harder for anyone to keep track of and thus allow
for the possibility of massive corruption among both the donors and the
recipients as well as in Moscow itself.
This arrangement began in August
2008 when Moscow faced the task of rebuilding much of South Osetia after the
war with Georgia. But the Crimean case is different and more complicated. On the one hand, so far at least there is
less destruction. And on the other, Russian “modernization projects” of the
kind likely to be launched there are notoriously corrupt.
In addition to the billions of
rubles the central Russian government has promised to send to Crimea, the city
of Moscow has offered “almost a billion rubles” (28 million US dollars), Moscow
oblast 100 million rubles (3.8 million US dollars), and other federal subjects
proportionately less. Nizhny Novgorod, for example, says it will send 10
million rubles (380,000 US dollars).
Most of this is budgetary funds, but
the regional administrations are also involved in collecting contributions from
their most important businesses.
In the case of South Osetia, such
regional contributions have already involved massive corruption and led to
numerous court cases, and the same is likely to be true in Crimea or elsewhere,
given “suspicious local officials” and the involvement of supervising officials
from Moscow.
Crimea may be especially fertile
soil for the growth of corruption, Pertsev suggests, because much of the work
will involve repairs and refurbishing rather than new construction, the former
being even a richer source of corruption much of the time than the latter.
Moreover, purchases of medical equipment for the peninsula open up new
possibilities in that regard.
But
as interesting and symptomatic of the Putin regime as this kind of corruption
is, Moscow’s use of the regions has at least three consequences, two of which
work to the Kremlin’s advantage but one of which may have an impact exactly the
reverse of what Moscow would like.
First,
and perhaps most important, funding the unrecognized states in this way allows
the Kremlin to hide from its own people and from outsiders exactly what it is
doing until its presence is so well established that little or nothing can be
done about it, yet another way in which the Putin regime skirts the law.
Second,
it gives Moscow a tool that those who oppose the expansion of its influence
will find more difficult to oppose. A big Moscow investment is something those
involved and those against whom it is directed is visible and can serve as a
mobilizing tool. An equally large Russian investment consisting of numerous
smaller program is less easily a target for complaints.
But
third, this program may work against
Moscow in two ways. On the one hand, it is another example of the kind of
unfunded mandates Russian regions are already having to cope with and do not
like. And on the other, it brings such
regions into contact with those who have decided that staying within a
particular state was not in their interests.
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