The Minister of Defense of Ukraine, Oleksiy Reznikov, said that his department purchased 180,000 winter jackets, which were handed over to the Armed Forces last year. According to him, there were no complaints about them from the military.
Reznikov said this in a comment to Babel.
He emphasized that the delivery price is absolutely adequate to the market and the situation at that time — the shortage of clothing on the market and the need to urgently clothe as many military personnel as possible.
"Each jacket cost $86 (which is now equal to 3,177 hryvnias). I donʼt know why some Turkish documents list the price of a winter jacket at $29 (now itʼs 1,072 hryvnias). It may be about tax evasion in Turkey. In any case, this is not Ukraineʼs problem," the Minister of Defense noted.
Reznikov also said that the Public Anti-Corruption Council under the Ministry of Defense is already dealing with this situation, and journalists will receive all the information about this purchase.
The Minister of Defense also said that Peopleʼs Deputy Anastasia Radina and journalist Tkach did not accept his challenge. According to Reznikov, this means that their accusations of replacing winter jackets with summer ones were untrue.
"There is nothing left in the "investigation" without the accusation of changing winter jackets to summer ones. No one is ready to bear responsibility for this accusation. Let it be so. I ask all journalists who spread information about the purchase of summer jackets instead of winter ones to remove unverified materials, publish the official position of the Ministry of Defense regarding this purchase, and wait for the analysis of the situation," Reznikov stressed.
Whatʼs going on?
On August 10, journalist Yuriy Nikolov, citing sources at the customs office, reported that the Ministry of Defense purchased 233,000 winter jackets from a Turkish company for $20 million. Customs documents of one of the consignments showed that the cost of a consignment of 4,900 jackets en route from Turkey to Ukraine tripled (from $142,000 to $421,000, or from $29 to $86 per unit). In addition, given the weight of the jackets, they were light, not winter. "Ukrainian Pravda" reported that Oleksandr Kasai, the nephew of Peopleʼs Deputy from "Servant of the People" Gennady Kasai, was engaged in these purchases.
On August 25, Oleksiy Reznikov made a bet: if it turned out that the Ministry of Defense really supplied 180,000 summer jackets instead of winter ones, then he would resign. If it turns out that 180,000 winter jackets were supplied, and not summer ones, then Peopleʼs Deputy Anastasia Radina should submit a mandate, and journalist Mykhailo Tkach should stop working as a journalist for three years.
On August 26, Peopleʼs Deputy Anastasia Radina and journalist Tkach responded to Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov on the betʼs proposal. Radina offered Reznikov until 09:00 on Monday, August 28, to deny that the Ministry of Defense bought jackets without a tender from a "Turkish" intermediary company, one of whose owners is the nephew of Peopleʼs Deputy from the Defense Committee Gennadiy Kasai, as well as that the Ministry of Defense paid for jackets three times more expensive than the Turkish side indicated in the document, according to which the cargo left Turkey and traveled to the border of Ukraine.
The weaver demanded to refute the fact that the nephew of the Peopleʼs Deputy from "Servant of the People" was a co-owner of the company that supplied the scandalous jackets.