The Russian military's supply system

The Russian military's supply system has been a source of recurring scandals even in peacetime — before the full-scale war of 2022. Through theft, embezzlement and contracts handed to connected firms, spoiled or unfit food reached the soldiers while officials sold off military property. Those who exposed the abuses were often punished themselves.

Dog food for the soldiers (2011)

In May 2011 Major Igor Matveyev, an Interior Ministry troops officer serving in Vladivostok, released a video showing 3,111 cans labelled “premium-quality beef” that were in fact dog food. It had been fed to his soldiers for months, and the unit's storehouse held no edible canned meat at all.

According to the official investigation, a food-supply officer had stolen the real canned meat and the dog-food cans were meant for the base's guard dogs. Matveyev was relieved of his command, was then accused of assaulting his own soldiers, and spent about five years in prison (released in 2016). The man who exposed it was the one punished. In 2013 maggot-infested food supplied to the military was reported in the Sakhalin region.

Rotten food and connected firms

Catering for the army and for schools was concentrated largely in Yevgeny Prigozhin's firm Concord and the defence ministry's procurement arm Voentorg. Auditors repeatedly found expired products, undersized portions, substituted goods, E. coli in the food, cooks without health certificates, and storage violations. In 2022 Voentorg filed 560 lawsuits against Prigozhin-linked suppliers (claiming over 107 million rubles); in 2020 the claim had been 197.1 million rubles.

In December 2018 kindergarten children in Moscow fell ill with dysentery after eating Concord's food. Parents who sued were reportedly offered money to drop the case, and the court awarded only a small amount of compensation. The same supplier also fed the army.

Corruption from the top: Oboronservis (2012)

In 2012 it emerged that the state military contractor Oboronservis had sold defence-ministry property — including Moscow real estate such as the Soyuz Hotel — far below market value; the loss to the state was put at about 3 billion rubles (roughly 60 million dollars). Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov was dismissed, and his subordinate Yevgenia Vasilyeva, head of the ministry's property department, was convicted of fraud and embezzlement. Serdyukov himself was charged with negligence but amnestied in 2014.

Peacetime rot

These cases come from peacetime, years before the war of 2022. When the Russian supply system visibly collapsed in 2022 — soldiers looting food and begging for something to eat — the rot had been there all along. The same state that occupied Estonia and still holds the Estonian head of state's badge of office treated its own soldiers, in peacetime, as these cases show.

Sources: RFE/RL — Russian troops fed dog food; France 24 Observers — whistleblower officer; Military.com — the worst food issued by any military; Newsweek — 560 lawsuits over rotten food; The Moscow Times — mass poisoning lawsuit; The Moscow Times — Oboronservis fraud case; RFE/RL — Vasilyeva found guilty.