The Public Anti-Corruption Council (PACC) under the Ministry of Defense accused senior officials of the Defense Procurement Agency of official negligence due to the purchase of defective ammunition.
This is stated in the councilʼs message.
A number of media outlets, including Censor.NET, wrote about the defective ammunition received by the Ukrainian military in 2024. In particular, they were talking about 120 mm caliber mines.
According to the Anti-Corruption Council, more than 20 military units complained that they were forced to return defective ammunition to the manufacturer.
Anti-corruption officers found that out of 15 requested contracts, 14 had additional agreements to extend delivery times.
The department explained that the contract always specifies the exact quantities and final dates for the supply of ammunition. If the supplier cannot deliver the specified quantity of ammunition of the appropriate quality within the specified time frame, it should be fined.
"In our specific case of the supply of mortar rounds, no fines were imposed for either delivery time, volume, or quality, despite the fact that there were problems to one extent or another on all three of the three possible points," the council noted.
Having analyzed the response regarding state contracts, anti-corruption officers noted that some contracts are being implemented with extended deadlines and already have complaint acts regarding the supply of low-quality products. Most of the complaint acts are dated from November to December 2024 and concern ammunition of 155 mm, 120 mm and 82 mm calibers.
"Why is this important? In addition to the obvious — the need for full and timely provision of the army — there is a problem with the imposition of fines, namely the discretion on the part of the procurement agency, which may also contain corruption risks. Together with the strange behavior of the courts around the recognition of force majeure by defense enterprises, this distorts the domestic arms supply market and tolerates either inefficiency or corruption, or both together. Fines are either imposed equally or not imposed equally," the PACC says.
Anti-corruption activists believe that high-ranking officials of a state-owned enterprise — a manufacturer of ammunition — systematically violated the terms of contracts with the state customer and supplied low-quality critical items. They accuse them of fraud on a particularly large scale. And they accuse the leadership of the Defense Procurement Agency of official negligence.
The department added that they have already filed relevant applications with the State Bureau of Investigation and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau.
What preceded
The Defense Procurement Agency (DPA) was created in July 2022, modeled after the NATO Support and Supply Agency. Its task is to make weapons purchases for Ukraine transparent and eliminate corruption. Since January 2024, the agency has been headed by Maryna Bezrukova. On January 20, 2025, the Supervisory Board of the Defense Procurement Agency submitted a recommendation to the Minister of Defense Rustem Umerov to extend the contract of the current director of the Agency Maryna Bezrukova for one year.
On January 23, the supervisory board concluded an additional agreement to extend the contract with Bezrukova. However, the next day, Umerov announced a change in the leadership of the Defense Procurement Agency. Umerov noted that the results of arms procurement were unsatisfactory, so the system needed to be changed.
On January 25, the DPA reported that it would continue working under Bezrukovaʼs leadership, despite Umerovʼs decision. However, on January 27, Suspilne, citing its own sources, wrote that the minister had initiated an internal investigation into the agency, and Bezrukova had been suspended from work for the duration of the investigation.
Bezrukova herself said that her relations with Defense Minister Rustem Umerov "began to deteriorate" due to the incident with low-quality 120-mm mines.
On January 31, the Ministry of Defense informed that from February 1, the Defense Procurement Agency will be headed by Arsen Zhumadilov, who previously headed the State Logistics Operator, instead of Marina Bezrukova. Bezrukova appealed to President Volodymyr Zelensky to intervene in the conflict. Zelensky said that Minister Umerov has the right to do everything to avoid slowing down the provision of weapons to the Ukrainian army.
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