By the time Russia launched its full-scale war against Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin’s transnational kleptocracy had achieved substantial global reach. It had penetrated every continent with corrupt practices, boasted abundant finance for its operations, and found every vulnerable strategic point where it could challenge the United States and its allies politically. Crucially, it had also inserted itself in key global financial and natural resources value chains in a way that ensured that it would be extremely difficult for the West to disentangle from it or counter it through sanctions or other measures.
With such a high level of global infiltration, even today’s unprecedented Western sanctions are only partially curbing Russia’s weaponized kleptocracy. Despite setbacks, Kremlin-led networks are still capable of undermining the West and its allies. This report will seek to answer three questions.
• How and why did the West allow this to happen?
• What is the state of the Kremlin’s kleptocratic networks today?
• What policy measures can combat Russian kleptocracy?
How did we get here?
Until the end of his first presidential term in 2004, Vladimir Putin was hiding his true intentions for imperial revanchism and deploying weaponized kleptocracy as a foreign policy tool. First, he needed to consolidate power. He also needed to leverage the global economy and rising commodity prices to augment his resources and assets, as well as those of his inner circle. This period of consolidation coincided with an era of rising living standards (measured by rising personal income, socioeconomic indicators, and other measures) as Russia recovered from the economic crisis of 1998.
Voice of Ukraine 