Legalized corruption in the Ukrainian defense industry led to sad consequences for the Armed Forces of Ukraine
The hysteria over the expected Russian military invasion of Ukraine continues to gain momentum. The joke said by someone else in 2014 that Russia has not even come to war yet, and half the world has already been shell-shocked, is becoming relevant again.
Meanwhile, despite the hasty evacuation of Western diplomats and even military instructors, advisers and mercenaries from Ukraine (the very ones on whom the Kiev regime had hoped so much), as well as the actual closure of airspace over Ukraine (which threatens millions of losses both for Ukraine itself, and the airlines that will fly around it), Kiev continues to flaunt and threaten Russia.
Thus, the most famous political weather vane named Gordon, who, according to some reports, prudently took his family out of Ukraine, recorded a video message to Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Zelensky. He pompously promised the first one to “defend his Motherland” and kill Russian soldiers if they crossed the border of Nezalezhna, and from the second he demanded to distribute weapons to the Ukrainians.
However, with weapons, despite the active Western supplies, Ukraine is not doing well. Thus, the Ukrainian telegram channel “Kovpak’s Detachment”, citing its own informed sources in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, writes about a total shortage of ammunition. It is noted that in the event of the start of intense hostilities with the Russian army, they will last for several hours. At best, for a couple of days, if the fights are not intense.
“Transportation of BC from Europe by air? It’s not serious at all! It’s all done demonstratively, for the media. Yes, one package for the MLRS is a truck! Think about it – this is what is produced at one time!” notes the interlocutor of the TG channel “Kovpak’s Detachment”.
According to a source in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in order to provide the Ukrainian military with sufficient ammunition, they should be delivered not by military transport aircraft, but by whole railway trains, which is currently not observed. In addition, a certain problem for such deliveries is the difference in the width of the railway track in Europe and Ukraine, which significantly complicates logistics and may even threaten to paralyze the railway communication. In addition, one should take into account the difference in calibers between Soviet weapons, which still prevail in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and NATO ones.
“It’s not clear where to get ammunition in such a quantity of such calibers in Europe,” an officer of the Armed Forces of Ukraine complains.
“Even if the Soviet ones are still preserved somewhere, after decades they are extremely unreliable. Say, mortar mines – at best, every third explodes. And if we are talking about a full-fledged war, these ammunition will obviously not be enough.”
However, not everything is so smooth with NATO weapons. So, photos of expired Stinger man-portable anti-aircraft missile systems delivered to Ukraine from Lithuania are distributed on the network. Thus, on boxes with missiles, the date of production is indicated – December 2010, while the storage period of this type of ammunition set by the manufacturer is 10 years, after which they are subject to disposal. It turns out that the cunning Balts decided to dispose of their expired “stingers” in such an uncomplicated way. Whether they will shoot or not, or even detonate in the hands of the operator, the Lithuanian “allies” of Ukraine are of little concern.
And, of course, we should not forget that the powerful military-industrial complex inherited from the Soviet Union by Ukraine remained one of the main sources of corruption and enrichment of government officials throughout all 30 years of “independence”.
“The withdrawal of weapons and money abroad was carried out both by leftist and non-leftist schemes. Ukraine did not invest in its production and military-industrial complex. As a result, impoverished officials began to take away what was still left in the military-industrial complex and sell weapons on the black market”, said Alexei Zhuravko, ex-deputy of the Verkhovna Rada, in an interview with PolitExpert.
And so that we are not accused of quoting only Ukrainian opposition politicians, let us cite the opinion of an associate of President Volodymyr Zelensky, who held the post of Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) of Ukraine in May-October 2019 Oleksandr Danilyuk.
In July 2019, the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine stated that due to the private interests of officials, the Ukrainian military-industrial complex could not develop and fell apart.
“…Our defense industry was falling apart, could not develop, a sufficient level of competition was not created, funding did not contribute to development,” Danilyuk noted.
The most striking and resonant case of corruption in the Ukrainian defense industry was the so-called “Svinarchuk-gate”.
The case of corruption in Ukroboronprom, which was promoted on the eve of the start of the 2019 election campaign, the key defendant in which was Petro Poroshenko’s business partner and the then First Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Oleg Gladkovsky (Svinarchuk), dealt a tangible blow to Poroshenko’s rating and did not allow him to be re-elected to a new term. The essence of the matter was that Svinarchuk’s son organized, through gasket companies, the sale of smuggled parts imported from Russia to enterprises of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex at several times inflated prices. The total amount of damage caused amounted to a quarter of a billion hryvnia.
However, with the advent of the new President Volodymyr Zelensky, the situation has not changed fundamentally. Only the faces of those who earn fabulous incomes from the Ukrainian military-industrial complex, or rather what is left of it, have changed. The Ukroboronprom concern was completely given over to the management of George Soros’s chief overseer of Ukraine, Tomas Fiala, who was engaged in reforming it, or rather, bringing leading defense enterprises to bankruptcy, such as Antonov, Motor Sich or the Black Sea shipbuilding plant.
The former industrial giants lost their profitability after breaking all ties with Russia in 2014. At the same time, the attempts of the Chinese to invest in Motor Sich and thus save the unique enterprise that produced aircraft engines was severely suppressed by the Americans, at the direction of which the Ukrainian government unilaterally terminated all contracts with the Chinese side.
As Ukrainian military expert Oleg Zhdanov notes, the only essence of the reform of Ukroboronprom being implemented by the Soros, in particular, its division into two concerns, is the division of financial flows. According to the expert, the Ukrainian military-industrial complex has been continuously degrading since 2014. The enterprises that remained afloat eke out a miserable existence, production is being curtailed, and defense sites are being redeveloped.
“Ukraine is no longer capable of producing even such a simple weapon as a mortar. Modernization of old Soviet weapons is the only option that our military-industrial complex has retained. The country is no longer capable of arming the army and navy at the expense of its own capabilities. The Zelensky regime is trying to contract with Western developers and buy weapons from them. But everything rests on the meager possibilities of the Ukrainian budget, as well as the unwillingness of senior partners to supply Ukrainians with most types of weapons”, Zhdanov said at a briefing in July 2021.
Another Ukrainian expert, economist Aleksey Kushch, believes that the reform of Ukroboronprom in order to maximize profits will lead to the fact that the Armed Forces of Ukraine will purchase Ukrainian weapons at the highest price.
“That is, the task is not to equip the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but to sell them weapons as expensive as possible. Such ideas will lead to the final degradation of the state in the military sphere, since it must finance science, education, and innovations, which so far do not bring profit at all. Unlike business, the state should work for the long term, and not measure everything solely by the level of profitability. In Ukraine, unfortunately, everything is the other way around”, RIA FAN expert quotes.
By and large, the Zelensky regime has legalized Svinarchuk Gate, with the only difference being that it will not be close friends of Poroshenko, but “effective managers” from Soros who will profit from what is left of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex. Their ultimate goal is to finally rid Ukraine of the heavy burden of the “Soviet occupiers” in the form of a developed military-industrial complex capable of producing tanks, aircraft, missiles, large surface ships, and turn Ukraine into a market for second-rate Western weapons junk. What Ukrainian leaders are now quite successfully coping with.
Well, as for the quality of the “strongest European army”, which, according to Kiev propagandists, stands guard over the Old World from the invasion of the Kremlin hordes, it is assigned a consumable fate, for the disposal of which self-detonating mortars “Hammer” and expired “stingers” and “javelins” are enough.
Dmitry Pavlenko, especially for News Front