Not to look for the guilty, but to change the system - how the new team of the Ministry of Defense works

The new team of the Ministry of Defense, which began to be formed after the appointment of Rustem Umerov as the head of the Defense Ministry, had to quickly solve a difficult problem: to show that the ministry is ready to admit its mistakes, is open to dialogue with the public, and is determined to eradicate any corruption and implement new mechanisms of work in cooperation with the public. The conditional one hundred days of the new team have already passed, so we can summarize the first results, UNN writes.

The trigger for the need for fundamental changes in the Ministry of Defense was the infamous 17-hryvnia eggs. They also set the key direction for the work: changes in the catering system for the Ukrainian military.

The State Logistics Operator was created and headed by Arsen Zhumadilov. The choice of the head of the DOT was not accidental, as Arsen Zhumadilov, once head of the State Enterprise "Medzakupili" , managed to restore order in one of the most corrupt areas - the procurement of medicines.

The head of the DOT immediately stated that his priority was to have domestic producers participate in food tenders and gradually eliminate intermediaries from them.

"First, we build all our procurement strategies in such a way as to enable manufacturers to participate directly in our tenders. That is, we work not through intermediaries, but with those who directly produce certain products. If these are residents of Ukraine, i.e. our domestic national producers, then we are talking about them. If something is not produced in Ukraine, in principle, or is not produced in sufficient quantities, and we work with foreign manufacturers, we will make efforts to enter into contractual relations with them directly," Zhumadilov said.

It is clear that this approach was positively received by domestic producers. In their opinion, this will definitely lead to lower purchase prices, an increase in the range of products, and, most importantly, will give impetus to the development of the domestic economy.

There are people who criticize the idea of the State Defense Ministry to distribute the procurement of products and services and their delivery to military units. However, we can only talk about the correctness of this model after the first tenders are held and the process is launched.

The Hrynkevych case was an unexpected test for the new Defense Ministry team. All contracts for the supply of clothing and food were quickly terminated with the companies of the scandalous Lviv family. What is important is that this step was positively evaluated by the military.

"I believe that in a country that is striving for transparency in procurement and the fight against corruption, this is the right reaction. Even if these firms were innocent, but such facts were revealed at the time of the investigation, I think it is right," said Myroslav Hai, an officer and deputy head of the Armed Forces Reservists Council, in an exclusive commentary to UNN .

The logical consequence of this was unscheduled inspections by the Ministry of Defense of military units to check whether the products were delivered on time and met the declared quality standards.

Deputy Defense Minister Vitaliy Polovenko frankly admits that the results of these inspections are not particularly encouraging. For many contracts that were signed back in 2023, there were cases when the products were delivered to military units late and were of questionable quality.

In January alone, the Ministry of Defense prevented the supply of more than 362 tons of low-quality food for the military.

The Defense Ministry assured that such inspections will become regular.