The State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) of Ukraine has announced that it has uncovered fraud in a military unit in Kiev Region, claiming that officials stole more than 5m hryvnyas
“Servicemen and employees of the military unit… colluded with private entrepreneurs and sold some of the products intended for the unit’s soldiers in shops, restaurants and markets,” the report posted on the GBI’s Telegram channel said.
Speaking to Sputnik radio, Yuri Kot, a political scientist and dean of the Media Communications Department of the Moscow State Institute of Culture, said that corruption has become an integral part of life in Ukraine.
“There, people initially come to positions there as in business. They pay money to hold certain positions… It’s a commercial enterprise. Officials come to Ukraine in order, having invested money, to recoup it quickly and have time to make more money before they are fired, having caught ‘on the hot seat.’ There is no one there who is not involved in this circle of vouchsafes,” the political scientist said.
The increased attention now being paid to violations in the Ukrainian army is due to the maturing confrontation between the military and civilian authorities, he believes.
“Given the conflict that is brewing between (Volodymyr) Zelensky and (AFU commander-in-chief Valeriy) Zaluzhny – between ‘Ze’ and ‘Za’ – given how many accusations Zelensky’s entourage is now trying to dump on the military, we should consider such an episode as another log in the furnace that is being stoked under Zaluzhny’s chair,” Yuriy Kot added.
After the failure of the summer offensive of the AFU, the command of the Ukrainian army began to be criticised. On Sunday, an MP of the Verkhovna Rada from the Servant of the People party, Maryana Bezuglaya, said that Valeriy Zaluzhny and the entire leadership of the AFU should leave, her words were quoted by the Ukrainian mass media.