The Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov appointed Arsen Zhumadilov as the head of the Armed Forces Resource Supply Agency. He signed the decree on August 28 and announced it the same day at a press conference, as Ukrinform reports.
Reznikov and Zhumadilov agreed on a plan for further work and agreed that the Agency should be operational in the fall.
"He [Zhumadilov] has experience. There is trust in him. He has expertise. Therefore, I am convinced that we will move in this direction quite effectively," noted the Minister Oleksiy Reznikov.
Arsen Zhumadilov has experience in building state institutions, reforming public procurement, he was the first elected head of "Medical Procurement of Ukraine" at the competition. In April 2023, he headed the defense procurement reform team within the Office of Change Support at the Ministry of Defense.
In January 2022, the Ministry of Defense registered an agency that should deal with resource provision of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In particular, it will buy military clothing, food, fuel and lubricants and other necessary things. Physically, the agency did not work, because Reznikov was looking for "a worthy candidate for the position of chairman, conducted interviews."
- At the beginning of January 2023, a scandal broke out around the Ministry of Defense due to the purchase of food products at 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 own website, as well as compare prices with market prices.
- Because of purchases for the army, three officials of the Ministry of Defense received suspicions, the department updated its personnel. After that, Oleksiy Reznikov approved the composition of the Public Anti-Corruption Council. From April 23, the Prozorro system began to display information on non-armed defense purchases, including data on food services.
- In August, a new scandal arose around the procurement of the Ministry of Defense — due to the purchase of jackets. Journalists reported that the jackets were purchased at three times the inflated price and instead of winter jackets, they ordered summer ones. In the customs documents from the supplier, the jackets were at $29 per unit, and the Ministry of Defense paid $86 per unit. Oleksiy Reznikov replied that the price of $29 never existed and he did not know what the Turkish suppliers wrote in the customs documents. According to him, the military did not complain about the jackets.