Corruption in Ukraine is a long standing issue. As the Guardian headlined more than a decade ago:
Welcome to Ukraine, the most corrupt nation in Europe – Guardian, Feb 6 2015
The inflow of money to Ukraine since the beginning of the war has only increased the problem. With billions of dollars flowing in everyone in a position to capture some of it will give it a try.
Western media mostly ignore the issue. It only comes up when it is needed to interfere in favor of this or that faction within Ukraine.
Yesterday’s double NY Times serving about corruption within Ukraine’s weapon procurement, must be seen in that light.
In Ukraine, Fraud and Waste Are Rewarded With More Weapons Contracts (archived) – NY Times, Sep 6 2026
4 Things We Found in Secret Ukrainian Military Audits (archived) – NY Times, Sep 6 2026
From the first piece:
A Ukrainian arms factory, it turned out, had supplied the military with thousands of defective mortar rounds. A burly weapons factory boss, Leonid Shyman, would eventually be arrested and charged in one of the war’s most public examples of defense-industry fraud.
But even as the officials noticed that weapons were arriving faulty, government audits obtained by The New York Times show, Ukraine’s Defense Procurement Agency continued to award Mr. Shyman’s factory new contracts.
The case reflects a persistent phenomenon of the war in Ukraine. Seven of Ukraine’s top 10 military contractors won new business despite open criminal investigations for fraud, failures to deliver on earlier deals or the arrest of chief executives for corruption, according to the government audits obtained by The Times, court records and Ukrainian news accounts.
The second piece sums up the worst cases:
- Auditors found repeated examples of inflated prices, yet nothing was done.
- Companies failed to deliver, or provided faulty ammo, and still got more contracts.
- Companies won contracts without proving they could deliver.
- Arms companies reported rising profits, while Ukraine’s losses piled up.
Auditors found that in just one year, 2024, Ukraine lost about $1.2 billion to fraud, waste and mismanagement.
U.S. and European tax payers have spent quite a lot to learn about the national sports of Ukraine:
“Anything that isn’t nailed down in Ukraine will be stolen,” said James Wasserstrom, an American anticorruption expert who has tried throughout the war to draw attention to defense industry fraud. “This has been a longstanding tradition.”
The NY Times revelation, laudable though late as it is, comes with a political intention . It is promoting a Ukraine figure as ‘clean’ even while that person is part of the swamp:
[T]he same procurement process that kept Ukraine in the fight and enabled the drone revolution has become a vulnerability in itself, one that has shaken domestic politics. A former defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, tried to overhaul the system and said defense contractors ran him out of office for doing so.
“There is a lot of corruption,” Mr. Fedorov said after his firing. His ouster sparked the largest street protests since the war began. Mr. Zelensky has said he fired Mr. Fedorov because of his clashes with military leaders.
Mr. Zelensky has failed to clean up the procurement system, and the problems have reached into his inner circle. Last year, corruption investigators secretly recorded his former business partner urging officials to buy armored vests that had failed safety tests. Investigators say the man fled Ukraine amid the investigation. Mr. Zelensky has not been implicated and has said that he supports the investigation.
Fedorov was only ostensibly fired because he clashed with military leaders. The real reason was his preference for payments from one drone company over another’s.
Zelenski and his friends are associated with the Fire Point drone maker:
The investigation by the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine, or NABU, alleges that Timur Mindich, a close ally of President Volodymyr Zelensky, led a group getting kickbacks from energy construction and procurement, including building defenses for Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, and laundering the proceeds. Several other figures in the Zelensky government are implicated.
While the case focuses on energy, the name Fire Point has come up. Fire Point is a private defense contractor that emerged in 2023 and makes the FP-1 long-range strike drone and the “Flamingo” cruise missile. The Kyiv Independent reported in August that Fire Point was the subject of an investigation into defense corruption that in part explored its connections to Mindich, who was alleged to be its unofficial beneficiary. Fire Point denied the connection to Mindich.
Timur Mindich has fled to Israel from where he will not be extradited.
Mindich, Zelenski’s friend, is the silent owner of Fire Point which has received drone contracts from Ukraine’s defense ministry for billions of dollars:
“All the data clearly indicate that Timur Mindich is indeed either one of the company’s beneficiaries or its only real beneficiary. […],” the Public Anti-Corruption Council said in a statement on the Midas case, published on Wednesday.
Mykhailo Fedorov, who the NY Times tries to elevate, was patronizing a different drone provider (machine translation):
His opponents accuse him of squandering billions of budget funds on the purchase of the much-hyped P1SUN interceptor drones from his friend Konotopsky’s company, SkyFall. However, these drones proved ineffective against the jet-powered “shahids,” which are now becoming Russia’s main strike force. Fedorov neglected to address these threats, and Ukraine is now reaping the consequences. The funds for the P1SUN have already been spent, leaving a huge hole in the Defense Ministry’s budget.
The ‘huge hole’ caused by Fedorov’s drone buying from his friends company, and from other shenanigans he was involved in, amounted to $27 billion.
The FP-5 drones by Fire Point which target Russian infrastructure regularly fell to Russian interception. Less then 10% of its launches are successful. The P1SUN interceptor drones made by Sky Fall fail to catch up with Russia’s jet-driven Geran drones.
But both are generating high profits for Zelenski’s or, respectively, Fedorov’s friends.
Fedorov, by the way, just received a retroactive bribe from U.S. oligarch Alex Karp (machine translation):
[A]fter Fedorov recently announced the creation of his own military company, in which Palantir CEO Alex Karp was a key investor, Fedorov was immediately reminded of anti-corruption laws that prohibit him from making deals with private legal entities for another year after his dismissal if the official made any decisions related to their activities within the year prior to his dismissal (and Fedorov oversaw cooperation with Palantir in the Ministry of Defense).
War is a Racket – even more so when the country it is waged in is notoriously corrupt while the money involved is taken from people who have no means to end it.