“Umerov is responsible.” Interview with Nikolov – about a new scandal with the Ministry of Defense and a Polish company regarding the purchase of weapons worth UAH 23 billion

— Serhiy Zgurets, editor-in-chief of Defense Express, writes about a possible scandal due to the purchase of ammunition for the Armed Forces bypassing the Defense Procurement Agency. It is not just about the Armed Forces, but also about the State Border Service, which allegedly intends to buy projectiles from a Polish manufacturer. Do you know about it? What should the audience know about this situation?

— Unfortunately, this is no longer a possible scandal, but an active scandal.

Today, deputies in the Verkhovna Rada decided to summon the Minister of Defense [Рустема] It is moderate to yourself to give evidence in this regard. It is no longer about a potential, possible solution — to buy something someday. In fact, the government has already adopted the relevant order — to take money from the Defense Procurement Agency, 23 billion hryvnias, and hand it over to the border guards, who had never had such sums at their disposal in their lives, had never had the experience of supplying such a large amount of ammunition, moreover, part of which they they do not use it at all, because they simply do not have the appropriate artillery. It is about the purchase of mines, shells – a lot of things.

The cynicism of the situation was added by the fact that the Ministry of Defense specifically asked to take money from them. And unfortunately, what I have already managed to find out, the money is being taken from contracts that the Defense Procurement Agency has already worked on, agreed to, and the supplier companies have already received the appropriate licenses in their countries for delivery [зброї] for Ukraine. Even more than that – they take it away [кошти] from existing contracts, for which payments should have been made now, by the end of the year.

I don’t know how to call it without using the word corruption, because, unfortunately, you can get some kind of punishment for it. But it is necessary to speak precisely in this field, since it is about a terrible situation, which is based on the intention of the border guards to conclude a contract with the Polish company – PHU Lechmar. This is an office whose owners have dozens of other pads registered on them. This company is not a manufacturer in any case. These are classic “table, chair, horns and hooves”, so-called resellers, who usually conclude a contract, and then look for where to fulfill it, on what basis.

And unfortunately, the Defense Procurement Agency already cooperated with this company in 2023. It turned out to be me (I can’t call it another word), banal fraud.

Defense Procurement Agency [Володимир] Picuso was still in charge. These businessmen promised to supply us with shells – the most popular 155 caliber – for 70 million euros (about 3 billion hryvnias). Received the contract. Thank God that they were not paid a penny, because after the contract was concluded, they immediately began to flounder on the fifth point.

Long sad stories began: “Oh, sorry. We simply make shells at several factories, explosives are made in one country, in another, in a third. And we have something wrong with the blasters at the factories, let’s replace these blasters with some others.” The detonator is that part of the projectile, the head itself, which, upon meeting the ground, forces the projectile to explode, detonate. Since this is an important part of the projectile, our military began asking for specific information to have an idea of ​​what they were going to replace it with, whether it worked, or if it even existed in nature.

These “wonderful” people, the Poles, refused to provide this information, began to turn their noses up, and after two or three months of such non-delivery, they generally thought that “oh, something is difficult for us, we will generally sell these shells to others, but we will not sell them to you.” .

Thank God, then, at the end of this story, the Defense Procurement Agency was already headed by Marina Bezrukova. And it is final [припинила співпрацю з] Poles

Apparently, this was imprinted in the minds of the Poles, because this time they rolled out their commercial offer, as my colleagues write, which is worth 100 billion hryvnias, not to the Defense Procurement Agency (the largest window for weapons purchases in the country); they did not go there at all, but went to the border guards, whose budget of such a scale does not exist even in nature and in theory.

— Is it known who on the Ukrainian side makes these decisions? There is a contract for 23 billion, we do it not through the Defense Procurement Agency, but we take money from this Agency. This should be decided by an official. Do we know who makes the decisions?

– It is known. This is Rustem Umerov, the Minister of Defense in person. His first deputy is also involved here [Іван] Havrylyuk Therefore, everything is clear here, it is absolutely their responsibility.

Unfortunately, I cannot verify this now, but they say that Umerov was in South Korea last week, trying to extort some weapons. Unfortunately, nothing is known whether he brought any agreement from there. But on Friday, when this decision was made by the Government, he allegedly even managed to personally come to the Government and testify.

– Can we understand his logic? We can play devil’s advocate.

– We can.

— There is an office that has a very bad reputation. We now take and turn to her again. Moreover, we do it in a very inconvenient way, trying to pay them 23 billion.

— I have a simple hypothesis that explains everything.

These arms contracts are usually a matter of trust and knowledge of what is really going on. Relatively speaking, the Bezrukova Agency already has enough competence to understand what, where, and who actually has what is in the warehouses, and to be able to know who has the emptiness and the wind. And they just sell you photos. I’m not kidding. In reality, they just send photos of the boxes, maybe 10 shells of some kind are lying in some room. And they send it to you as a confirmation that you have 20 billion in total. Such cases are known, it happened.

These beautiful people clearly understood that Bezrukova would get away with it… No, of course you can. But she will send inspectors to check what is there, so that you prove your ability, so that you show what we will do at this plant next year, show the contracts. And the most important thing is that you show your export license, that you have the right to export weapons from your country or where you have them. This is a basic key document.

So here it is: as far as I understand, from the data that we have now, this Polish company does not have an export license at all for the weapons that they allegedly offer.

To fix it in my head. The firm’s commercial proposal assumes that it wants 100% upfront payment. Even for what will be done a year later somewhere in the factories. They are just now saying: “Give us 23 billion hryvnias, and then we will deliver something to you one day – for sure, maybe we will bring it, we are cool guys, we used to bring you everything.” And with all this, they did not go to professional buyers, but went to border guards.

The border guards officially addressed this in a letter to Umerov. Umerov asked the government: “Oh, let’s take it away. I have 23 billion. And if I can’t arrange it with Bezrukova, then let the border guards do it.” And this all fits into the logical framework of everything that has been happening for the past six months with the Ministry of Defense’s planned attacks on its own Defense Procurement Agency, which, it turns out, is headed by a not-so-good person who is prone to some compromises.

— Marina Bezrukova was on our air, I personally managed to talk to her. She confirmed that this pressure is constantly there, there are proposals to conclude contracts with these, and not with other companies. But, as she claims, she is holding on. But the State Border Service does not have enough rocket artillery to use these shells…

– There are not so many mines. In our case, we are talking about deliveries of hundreds of thousands of different shots. And hundreds of thousands are for the entire front, this is the scale of the entire front, all the Armed Forces together with the National Guard, with the entire ghamuz. That is, in no case are we talking about border guards. Not that they are bad, just that there are significantly, much less of them.

After all, the very first words are in the order of the Cabinet of Ministers on the transfer of money “at the request of the Ministry of Defense, we are handing over 23 billion hryvnias for the purchase of ammunition by border guards with subsequent transfer to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Defense Forces.” Well, how is it?

— Is it possible to rewind this situation, how can it be done?

— Of course, as of today, all the bureaucratic formalities have not yet been completed, because this process is not just about taking an envelope with money from the bedside table, which was put aside for a “black” day. It is about rewriting a bunch of some documents, budget assignments. The agency, of course, is a team member of the Ministry of Defense, a body subordinate to the Ministry, it will not sabotage, it does it all.

Now there is a question whether it will be possible to reach the government, which made this decision formally, to the Office of the President, which (absolutely understandable) here is absolutely on topic. Because for the government to make a decision of state weight for 23 billion hryvnias… I can’t believe it for the life of me [прем’єр Денис] Shmyhal allowed himself such self-activity. We haven’t had such subjectivity in the government for five years, if I’m not mistaken.

Therefore, there are opportunities. Now what is called would be desire.