Ukraine adopts spending reforms amid corruption scandals
Ukraine's Defense Ministry has announced the creation of a new logistics support planning department that will draw up long-term procurement plans for the military. The move comes after a number of high-ranking Ukrainian military officials have recently been arrested on suspicion of corruption and embezzlement.
Deputy Defense Minister Vitaly Polovenko explained that the goal of the new unit is to reduce the number of emergency purchases for the Ukrainian military, which often result in the government overpaying for sub-par goods.
According to a statement on the ministry’s website, the new procurement department will be responsible for monitoring the market, analyzing prices, and determining the approximate costs of things the army might need, such as food, clothing, fuels, lubricants, and other technical equipment.
Final purchases, however, will now be made by the State Logistics Operator, according to the statement.
Just one week before the announcement, Ukrainian authorities detained the former head of the military’s central food supply department on accusations of illegally receiving assets worth more than $1.5 million between 2022-2023, including a new car, an apartment in Kiev, and 53 land plots across the country.
In late February, Ukraine also arrested former lawmaker Sergey Pashinsky and charged him with defrauding the government of about $25 million through a “convoluted fuel-buying scheme.”
In January, two more Defense Ministry officials and the head of the company Lviv Arsenal were also accused of stealing $40 million that had been earmarked for the purchase of 100,000 mortar shells.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov earlier noted that late last year his department identified other similar violations to the tune of more than $254.9 million and announced that new procurement rules would follow NATO standards.
The recent string of high-level corruption scandals in Ukraine has become a point of concern for Kiev’s Western backers, primarily the US, where Republicans lawmakers have been pushing back against President Joe Biden’s efforts to provide a new $60 billion aid package to the country.
“Just a few years ago, the only thing that we knew about Ukraine was that it was the most corrupt country that anyone had ever heard of… To even try to believe and hope that maybe the funding is being managed better now than it was previously is laughable,” argued Republican congressman Matt Rosendale from Montana.
The former commander of Poland’s ground forces, General Waldemar Skrzypczak, also suggested in January that the Ukrainian military and political leaders don’t actually believe their country can win the conflict against Russia, which he believes is why they are stealing Western aid on a massive scale.
