Russian Corruption and How It is Portrayed In the Western Press

Some people were just arrested at the Pushkin Institute in Moscow. If the allegation is true, when a migrant failed the exam, it was possible to just bribe the employees to give him a fake certificate. I don’t know if this sting is directly related to the Crocus City Hall shooting, or if authorities are finally just cracking down on obvious corruption that should have been stamped out already.

Maria was quite mad because she had to pay a fine for not registering me at her address within 1 week of my arrival (she did not know such a rule existed), but all four of the accused shooters had invalid residency registrations.

So yes there is a lot of corruption in Russia, but is it worse than back in the USA? I don’t know. In the context of immigration law, there are tons of cases of rapists and murderers being in the country illegally, and had committed multiple serious crimes before with no consequences. Recently, it has come to light that American immigration officials often don’t even bother to check if a prospective visitor is wanted for violent or sexual crimes back in his home country. There is a lot of political and corporate pressure for cheap unskilled labor in the USA, so the rule of law is frequently ignored.

All of these things are just as much corruption in the USA as the equivalent inadequacies in Russia. The difference is that a case of corruption in Russia is blown up in western media, while an identical case of corruption in the USA is downplayed or ignored. A cynical person like myself might conclude that our elites view migrant crime as a good thing, because a fearful population is more submissive and easier to control. Criminals make citizens afraid for free, so why not import more of them? Every American citizen who is robbed or raped by an illegal, or knows someone who was, will be more open to government shows of force, even when it’s performative or for an obviously dishonest reason.

What I find particularly curious about the aftermath of the Crocus City Hall attack is that western media has been largely silent on the immigration scandal. Normally, western journos scream “Look, Russian corruption!” This is a classic case of Russian corruption, with some officials being too lazy to do their jobs correctly, and others outright taking bribes. Not only are western journos not condemning this corruption, they’re taking the opposite stance of crying that Russians are being mean to the poor immigrants for no reason, like this CNN article.

This right here should illustrate if Russia is truly corrupt or it’s all just a media exaggeration. The answer is both, sort of. Russia does have longstanding problems with corruption that they’re trying to gradually sort out, but the problem is exaggerated in the western press for propaganda purposes. The dishonest intent of western journos is evident in how they only selectively propagate tales of Russian corruption. They obviously don’t want to highlight Russia’s corrupt immigration system, because that would make Americans think “Hey, our immigration system is corrupt too!” A foreign terrorist could just as easily shoot up an American concert, but the regime doesn’t want us to think about the obvious solution of just making it more difficult for foreign terrorists to cross the border.

Ian Kummer

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