At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, due to the critical need, signed contracts for the purchase of ammunition with all companies that claimed to be able to supply shells. Myroslav Hai, an officer and deputy chairman of the Armed Forces Reserves Council, told this in an exclusive commentary to UNN .
They made deals with everyone. This practice is like putting out a fire, as they say. Because it has just started on a full scale. But this practice has not proven itself, because in fact it is a very specific business - not only the production of ammunition, but also the supply. There are not many companies in Ukraine that can do this, that have a good reputation among foreign companies that have been involved in this field for a long time. And there have been cases where some companies took money, withdrew it abroad, and did not supply ammunition. Or they didn't even withdraw the money, but simply failed to supply it because things didn't work out. For example, they did not receive export licenses, etc
According to him, the Ministry of Defense, by creating various working groups on arms procurement, wants to make this process open to exclude any possible abuse.
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It should be noted that the vast majority of the Armed Forces' weapons before the full-scale invasion were, to varying degrees , Soviet inheritance. Therefore, the weapons themselves, their spare parts and ammunition are produced mostly in the former Warsaw Pact countries. Some of the states that have the ammunition Ukraine needs are hostile, such as russia and belarus. Ukraine received all possible assistance from other post-socialist countries that joined the EU (Poland, Czech Republic, etc.).
However, there remains a group of Balkan states that, despite the European integration processes in some of them and support for Ukraine, are still under the strong influence of the russian Federation. In these states, friends of russia are still in power and have a significant impact on the policies of their countries. In practice, this is manifested in the fact that despite their overwhelming support for Ukraine, they refuse to supply us with weapons and ammunition directly. Therefore, Ukraine is forced to purchase ammunition from these countries through a number of intermediaries.
At the same time, the arms market is strictly controlled by the states. Not only direct arms exports (state-to-state) are controlled, but also exports through private companies. Such control is exercised through the issuance of export licenses.