Director of the Lviv Arsenal company Yuriy Zbitnev and his deputy Vasyl Sakhnenko refused to comment on the failure to fulfill the contract with the Ministry of Defense to supply 100,000 mortar rounds to the Ukrainian military, UNN reports.
Sakhnenko, in response to UNN's offer to conduct an interview, said that he did not want to talk until the investigation was over.
Zbitnev, in turn, referred to the fact that "strange things are happening with the contract," so he is not ready to talk yet.
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Back in the fall of 2022, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and Lviv Arsenal signed a contract for the supply of 100,000 mortar rounds worth almost UAH 1.4 billion. The contractor for the supply of ammunition from the Elmech plant in Croatia was the Slovakian company SEVOTECH, represented by Oleksiy Khoroshayev.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine have not yet received the ammunition under this contract. The Ministry of Defense has tried to return the funds, but has not yet succeeded in doing so, as most of them - UAH 818 million - have been arrested in the accounts of Lviv Arsenal as part of criminal proceedings. Another part of the funds - 30% of the amount transferred by the MoD to the accounts of Lviv Arsenal - was transferred abroad by the Ukrainian company as an advance payment.
In January 2024, law enforcement officers conducted searches in the case of the Lviv Arsenal contract and announced five suspicions, including Zbitnev and Sakhnenko.
The editorial board of UNN has analyzed the chronology of the signing of the contract between the Ministry of Defense and Lviv Arsenal and has offered interviews to all those involved.
One of the defendants in the case, a representative of SEVOTECH's contractor company, Oleksiy Khoroshayev, is now actively communicating with Western media and agreed to talk to journalists of UNN. In the interview, he claimsthat 30% of the ammunition that Lviv Arsenal transferred to SEVOTECH's accounts is actually there, but no one wants to bring it to Ukraine.
His words were also confirmed by the documents provided by the lawyers of another defendant in the case, former MoD official Oleksandr Liev, during the court hearing on March 15.
"Despite the seizure of funds, they (SEVOTECH and Lviv Arsenal - ed.) are trying to supply the appropriate number of shells within the amount received (30% transferred by Lviv Arsenal to SEVOTECH's accounts - ed.), namely, an agreement for 30,000 shells. And the next document is an import license for the supply of shells from Bulgaria... After that, the funds (remaining in the accounts of the Lviv Arsenal - ed.) were frozen, it was not even possible to pay for the delivery of those 30 thousand shells, and, accordingly, on November 30 (2023 - ed. ) SEVOTECH company - this is reported in a letter (which the defense received from the Ministry of Defense - ed.) - informs that the shells are in Bulgaria and ready for delivery," lawyer Markiyan Bem said during the court hearing.
According to him, Lviv Arsenal did not have the funds to supply shells from Bulgaria to Ukraine at the time, so SEVOTECH transported 7,000 rounds of ammunition on its own in November, December 2023, and January 2024 from Bulgaria to Slovakia. The lawyer emphasized that in this way, the companies were trying their best to supply shells to Ukraine.