“Members of the Public Anti-Corruption Council under the Ministry of Defense (MoD) accused New York Times journalist Andrew Kramer of “outright lies” and “outright provocation” in his recent article about the Ukrainian defense company Fire Point. It is about a scandal involving the company’s overpricing of its products. This is stated in the statements of the members of the GAR MO, veteran Yuriy Gudymenko and”, — write on: ua.news
Members of the Public Anti-Corruption Council under the Ministry of Defense (MoD) accused New York Times journalist Andrew Kramer of “outright lies” and “outright provocation” in his recent article about the Ukrainian defense company Fire Point. It is about a scandal involving the company’s overpricing of its products.
This is stated in the statements of the members of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, veteran Yury Gudymenko and journalist Tetyana Nikolayenko on Facebook.
Yurii Gudymenko and Tetiana Nikolayenko categorically denied Kramer’s key statements:
- About addressing the parliament: The NYT journalist wrote that HAR MO allegedly called for a parliamentary investigation allegations regarding Fire Point drones.
- Refutation of GAR MO: “HAR MO did not address the parliament regarding FirePoint drones, as the NYT wrote about it… There were simply no appeals to Parliament on FirePoint, this is an outright lie“. Gudymenko noted that the Council, having evidence, hands it over directly to law enforcement agencies.
- About auditing and pricing: The reporter cited an unnamed audit that allegedly stated that the FP-1 drone could have been produced more cheaply and that the Defense Acquisition Agency did not initiate negotiations, awarding the contracts at $16.7 million more.
- Refutation of Nikolayenko: The journalist criticized these statements, stating that the audits he writes about were conducted on other dates and other figures appear there. She suggested that Cramer “obviously failed to analyze the audit data, otherwise you would have seen the facts, not a set of general phrases.”
Tetyana Nikolayenko assured that the Civic Council is monitoring the situation with Fire Point, but the information they have so far is not sufficient. Yuriy Gudymenko called the publication of the NYT a provocation, the purpose of which is “to force an early communication, without collected facts.”
Earlier it was reported that FirePoint started serial production of the Flamingo cruise missile, capable of covering a distance of up to 3,000 km and carrying a warhead weighing more than a ton.
People’s deputy from “Holos” Roman Kostenko stated that the Armed Forces of Ukraine cannot currently receive thousands of FP-5 “Flamingo” cruise missiles, because it was unrealistic to set up their mass production.
