Scandal with arms procurement: Umerov finds the guilty - dismisses deputy and changes leadership of defense procurement

After the arms procurement scandal, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov announced the dismissal of his deputy and the replacement of the head of the Defense Procurement Agency. He wrote about this on his Facebook page, UNN reports.

According to Umerov, the only criterion that the Ministry of Defense sets for the Defense Procurement Agency is to provide the frontline with all the necessary weapons on time and in full.

"Unfortunately, over the past six months, instead of timely supplying the army with ammunition, we have received political games, contract leaks, information leaks (law enforcement will definitely check these facts), PR inaction and failure to fulfill the KPI by a subordinate enterprise of the Ministry of Defense," Umerov wrote.

According to him, arms procurement, which should be closed during martial law and a full-scale war with Russia, has somehow turned into an Amazon, "where every Internet user can see in real time who is buying what, in what volumes and from which manufacturers.

"And our defenders at the front have not felt the scale of these purchases, which would be at least commensurate with the PR in the media," the Defense Minister wrote.

Umerov decided to suspend all those who allegedly failed to do their job.

He submitted a motion to the Cabinet of Ministers to dismiss his deputy, Dmytro Klimenkov. The Ministry also decided not to extend the contract of Maryna Bezrukova.

In addition, the Ministry is withdrawing two state representatives from the Supervisory Board.

The Supervisory Board is scheduled to be relaunched in the near future.

Arsen Zhumadilov will be appointed as the new director of the Defense Procurement Agency.

Umerov noted that this year, the PRA and the DOT received the same conditions, but only one agency did the work, while the other created only media noise.

Recall

According to media reports, in her first weeks in office, Bezrukova signed a contract for mines. In the summer, it became apparent that the plant could not produce the mines on time. Then Deputy Minister Dmytro Klimenkov asked the plant to extend the delivery time under the contract. Bezrukova refused. Subsequently, the Agency managed to get money for the defective ammunition and buy it from other manufacturers, but time was lost.

In November, the Defense Ministry said it was actively investigating the causes of the 120-mm mortar malfunction.

Add

On December 16, 2024, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov amended the charters of the Defense Procurement Agency (DPA) and the DOT.

These changes, adopted the day before the Supervisory Board of the Defense Agency started its work, actually allowed the Ministry of Defense to exercise manual control over the agencies. From now on, procurement can be controlled directly, bypassing their heads and supervisory boards. Earlier, Umerov had already tried to liquidate the SDO by merging it with the DOT in order to replace the agencies' management with more loyal ones.