What corruption is or how to eliminate it however varies between who is talking about it. Just like phrase "cost of living" lost any concrete meaning and now used in support of vastly different measures, corruption in Russia is also mean different things to different people, as government too wishes to shift goalposts from systemic change to occasional public lynching of few scapegoats.
In legal terminology there is no offence called corruption. Instead, there are variety of different offences based on what exact form the corruption takes. It can be, bribery, where a person gives someone cash in exchange for a favor they are not entitled to, embezzlement, were official misuses public funds for personal use, extortion where officials use their position of power to demand money from common people, probably more, but I will leave it at that.
The corruption that plagues Russia most is of course extortion, closely followed by embezzlement. At least these are what annoy people most. Extortion is a reverse bribery, where bribe is not offered to official, but instead demanded by them. It's akin to a protection racket where mafia demands money from a shopkeeper to keep the shop safe, often vaguely threatening to destroy it if shop owner refuses.
In a mafia state such as Russia, its government officials that extort money from shop keepers or citizens. For example, when a public prosecutor opens a criminal case against someone and then asks for a fat stack of cash for it to be closed, threatening to send it to court if victim refuses. In a less corrupt country isolated case like that can often be dealt by complain to higher ups or sometimes by just attending the court and arguing for one's innocence. In Russia however that will not work. Why you ask? It's because in Russia managers and supervisors are corrupt too.
In Russia director of public prosecution is himself corrupt and demands bribes from his subordinates if they want to keep their jobs, leaving subordinates no choice by to extort money from ordinary businessmen and citizens. It's the same in other government jobs too. There was even a video (I could not find the full video, so I linked the video about that video) where police officer complained about the amount his police boss expected from him, arguing that it's impossible to raise that much no matter how many ordinary citizens he will harass.
What did government did about it, jailed that officer for corruption and tried to silence the whole affair. Corruption is the de-facto secret real system that exist underneath the nominal system of law enforcement in Russia. According to nominal rules that exist in Russia the officer should be lauded like Fitzgerald for exposing the corruption. However, the de-facto rules use mafia style "law of omerta", and thus per these mafia rules the officer was punished for breaking law of omerta and speaking out about the secretive dealings withing the government structures.
Needless to say, the secret but omnipresent mafia rules, that spread to nearly every aspect of life in Russia is unpopular with many ordinary citizens. People are fed up with fat government officials bleeding them dry of their already meagre salaries. That is the reason why videos about Putin palace, made by Navalny produce so much interest from Russian public. When people see just how opulent the life the highest ranked public officials is, they are filled with anger. People whose position of power allows them to extort bribes, live life that will put Hollywood stars to shame in a country where most people do not have sewage in their homes and have to use outhouse over latrine pit.
People occasionally do protest and demand systemic change. Such protests are often dispersed by riot police while government TV accuses Americans and "collective West" of inciting the protestors. <irony>Because who could possibly be outraged when public prosecutor demands many months of their salary to close a criminal case against them? Surely, they must be paid by Americans and George Soros to oppose the system that allows such abuses. </irony>
Irony aside, people do not like to be robbed by public officials and if they cannot vote on the ballot for a system change, they vote with their feet and leave Russia for places where that does not happen. Nonetheless not everyone can go and so demand for change hangs over the heads of Russian government officials like a grim reaper. In their nightmares they see Navalny becoming president and instituting a lustration against corrupt officials, which makes them wake up in cold sweat.
Needless to say, those who left Russia are not at all patriotic about their country. Even in Ukraine or Latvia for every pro-Russian Russian there is often more than one pro-European Russian who much prefer European way of life and government that does not extort bribes to Russian language and culture of Russki Mir. That is why Ukraine, that got chance to ditch the Russian mafia style governance for European rule of law, fights so hard to protect their future from Russification. There are other reasons too, but this one is very often overlooked.
That is why Ukrainians will not surrender. Russians in Western countries will not return to Russia. And protests demanding dismantling of mafia system and replacing it with European rule of law will continue in Moscow until that change will happen.
Russia has only its own plundering mafia style governance to blame for that. People do not want to be robbed by corrupt government officials; people want them gone.
I will write a separate article about historical reasons for mafia governance in Russia and why it's different from Europe, Baltic States and even Ukraine.
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