Former Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov was searched, but not on June 3, as the media reported.
This is reported by Babelʼs sources.
Today, a number of media outlets, including Ukrainska Pravda and ZN.UA, reported that on June 3, Reznikovʼs house was searched as part of a case involving the purchase of products for the army at inflated prices.
Babelʼs interlocutors say that the searches really took place, but not yesterday, but last month.
"Nothing was found, no documents were seized. The stolen phones were not seized either," the sources noted.
What preceded
In early January 2023, a scandal erupted around the Ministry of Defense due to the procurement of products at allegedly several times inflated prices (in particular , eggs at 17 hryvnias per piece ). Against this background, the Ministry of Defense decided to publish information about procurement contracts on its website and compare prices with market prices.
At the end of January, Deputy Defense Minister Vyacheslav Shapovalov, who was responsible for the logistics of the Armed Forces, resigned. It later became known that he, together with the then head of the Defense Ministryʼs department for material support of the Armed Forces Bohdan Khmelnytsky was involved in a case of embezzlement of a billion hryvnias from the budget.
On April 2, 2025, NABU reported that in the case of "17 hryvnias per egg" losses of 733 million hryvnias were discovered. Law enforcement officers declared suspicion against Khmelnytsky, the owner of the supplier companies Tetyana Hlynyana, two heads of the supplier companies, and an individual.
The scheme looked like this: during 2022-2023, the army was supplied with food through the purchase of so-called food kits. This provided for the possibility of ordering products according to an approved catalog, the most commonly used, such as vegetables, cereals, meat, water, made up only 10% of the assortment. The rest, such as spices, gelatin or berries, were ordered rarely or never.
The price of the set was formed taking into account all the items in the catalog and was their average cost. This allowed suppliers to manipulate prices: to overcharge them for popular products and undercharge them for little-used products or those that could not be ordered due to seasonality of supply (cherries or apricots in winter).
At first glance, there were no violations, and the price of the set did not change. However, potatoes, which were supplied in thousands of tons, were sold at a triple price, while seasonal berries and fruits, which were almost never ordered, cost a penny.
In April 2025, NABU reported that Reznikov was not a suspect in the case of embezzlement of food for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
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