Behind the "dirty" media campaign against the new team of the Defense Ministry and the State Logistics Operator may be a company that has already been involved in scandals with tenders for food for the Armed Forces, UNN writes.
The openly paid-for smear campaign has been going on for two weeks now. Manipulative accusations and open hints of corruption at a time when the first tenders for the supply of food to the Ukrainian army under the new rules are taking place, understandably, make both the organizers and bidders nervous. And most importantly, it is an attempt to convince society that changes in the system are impossible. Apparently, this is what the campaign's sponsors are counting on.
By a purely Ukrainian coincidence, the peak of the media blow came when two companies tried to block the first food tenders for the Armed Forces, which were announced by the State Logistics Operator, through the court.
Trade Poltava LLC was the first to file a lawsuit. It was later joined by Trade Granit Invest LLC.
"Trade Poltava is primarily engaged in the sale of tires and repair of automotive equipment, and suddenly decides to apply for tenders for the supply of food for the army for the first time.
However, it is Trade Granit Invest that needs to be looked at more closely. This company, which has been participating in the Defense Ministry's tenders for many years, has an interesting history and no less interesting connections. But for now, it is worth focusing on one aspect of its activities.
After food tenders began to be held through Prozorro in the middle of last year, this company, which had previously won billions in bids, suddenly began to feel uncomfortable. And after losing the tenders, it began to flood the courts with lawsuits to cancel their results.
The founder of Trade Granite Invest is Yulia Pavlichenko. When Petro Poroshenko was President of Ukraine, she headed the Maxmed International company, which participated in Ukrzaliznytsia's tenders. And again, by a strange coincidence, this firm became famous for blocking tenders with numerous complaints to the Antimonopoly Committee.
It even went so far as to have the then Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman publicly complain about Maxmed International.
As for Trade Granite Invest, the company is not giving up its legal "wars" against the Defense Ministry.
Last year, Dana Yarova, the current advisor to one of the Deputy Defense Ministers, clearly hinted that the firm accompanies its lawsuits with media campaigns.
Today we have a rather similar situation. On the one hand, we have the desire of the new team at the Ministry of Defense to tighten the requirements for suppliers of products in order to cut off dubious companies that do not fulfill their obligations. And, in fact, a company that is dissatisfied with the new tender conditions is trying to block the bidding through the court, and thus disrupt the supply of products to the Armed Forces.
On the other hand, there is a planned information attack on the new team of the Ministry of Defense with a clear goal: to discredit the new rules for holding tenders.
Context
For the second week in a row, a planned information campaign has been conducted against the Ministry of Defense and the State Operator of the Logisticsby pseudo-experts who have collaborated with Viktor Medvedchuk and other pro-Russian politicians.
The organizers and executors of this campaign use cheap manipulations and distort facts.
In an exclusive commentary to UNN, political analyst Ihor Reiterovych suggested that a large number of similarly negative reports about the Defense Ministry and the State Logistics Operator indicate a planned campaign to discredit them .
"It's clear that this is a planned campaign, because there are a lot of similar messages that relate to the activities of this particular SOE [State Operator of the Logistics]. They are similar. As a rule, they are based on the same information and were sent out quite purposefully through a network of tg-channels. I am more inclined to believe that these are some internal stories, just a struggle for influence, and an attempt to promote their people to take certain positions.
Of course, there is an option that the activists really drew attention to the violations they describe in such reports, but then the question is why there is no response from the Ministry of Defense to the appeals, including representatives of public councils and so on. Therefore, it seems to me that this is more like a reformatting of certain positions and an attempt to bring down one person in order to promote another," Reiterovych said.
In turn, military expert Mykhailo Zhyrokhov is convinced that companies that have been supplying food to the armed forces since the days of fugitive President Viktor Yanukovych perceive any attempts to establish fair rules of the game in this area as a blow to their monopoly position. And in order to maintain their positions, they resort to various methods of pressure .
"The fact is that purchasing food for the army has always been, let's say, potentially corrupt. And over time, a certain structure, a certain mafia, has formed there - companies that have been suppliers of food since the days of Yanukovych. And they perceive any changes in this market, changes for the better, as a blow to their monopoly, so they use, among other things, media injections. Multidirectional injections that undermine public confidence in this emerging structure (the State Logistics Operator - ed.). We need to look at who benefits from this. And it is definitely not beneficial to the army or society," Zhyrokhov said in an exclusive commentary to UNN.
"Державний оператор тилу": презентація відбулася, що далі26.12.23, 09:45