What worries me is that this is happening in the U.S. as well.
I mean you can definitely argue for inefficiency in the MIC, but you don't see people literally just stealing millions from the allocated budget and shifting it to their bank accounts or megayachts.
I am not saying it’s an identical situation, which seems to be the assumption of some. However, the oligarchical nature of the U.S. is not slowing down.
Contracts are definitely awarded to companies based on their political connections, and not necessarily merits. Look at the whole Halliburton/Cheney shitshow in Iraq for a recent example.
We're talking $40 billion worth of (cost-plus!!!) contracts awarded to a company that was widely viewed as incompetent by the soldiers on the ground, followed by the vice-president getting a position on the board of said company when he retired. This is after he got a $30 million golden parachute after leaving them in 2001.
It's just that the US manages to prolong this much longer than others.
In the west we have free press looking into it and exposing the theft, plus, the theft in the west has very complex schemes to make it look legit on the surface and to make sure nothing sticks to our Teflon politicians, but in Russia they don't need to worry about any red tape BS, they can just shove their hands in the public purse and take as much as they want and go directly to the Lamborghini dealership or the casino without any accountability, and if any reporter looks too deeply into their theft, they get death threats or even death through very suspicious circumstances.
It's orders if magnitude worse.