(Moscow) Russian soldiers and civil servants deployed in Ukraine will no longer be required to declare their income, the Kremlin announced on Friday, under an exemption from anti-corruption laws at a time when Moscow is increasing incentives to leave to fight .
“It concerns those who work on the [quatre] territories,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the press, referring to the four Ukrainian regions (those of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhya) which Moscow claims should be annexed – without however fully controlling them – and where most of the fighting is currently taking place.
On Thursday evening, the Russian government published a decree by President Vladimir Putin on “the specifics” of the rules of the fight against corruption “for certain citizens during the special military operation” in Ukraine.
According to this text, the military, police and members of the security services operating in Ukraine, as well as other civil servants sent there, no longer have “the obligation to provide information on their income, expenses, property “.
The measure also applies to the “spouses and minor children” of the persons concerned and is retroactive from February 24, 2022, the date of the start of the offensive in Ukraine.
In addition, those concerned now have the right to receive “rewards and donations” if they are “of a humanitarian nature” and “have been received in connection with participation in the military operation” in Ukraine.
This new provision is part of the Kremlin’s incentive measures to push the Russians to leave to fight in Ukraine: promise of significant bonuses, banking and real estate facilities, financial aid to families in the event of death or injury, etc.
In Russia, military personnel and officials close to the military-industrial complex are regularly convicted in high-profile corruption and embezzlement cases.