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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
An article about corruption and embezzlement in Ukrainian defense procurement that 6 published in The New York Times in September provoked a noticeable reaction. And this despite it being Sunday and all political attention in Kyiv being focused on the arrival of Donald Trump’s representatives and talks involving American, Ukrainian, and European parties.
The timing of the publication itself is unlikely to go unnoticed. The New York Times posted the piece at five in the morning Eastern Time — it was then noon in Kyiv, Vitkoff and Kushner were arriving in the capital, and defense ministry representatives from Britain, Germany, and France were preparing for negotiations.
Whether this was an intentional tie to the Americans’ visit is not known for certain. But the coincidence looks too convenient to ignore entirely.
However, the timing is not the main point.
The New York Times does not write about an abstract “problem of corruption,” but cites specific contracts, sums, companies, and surnames. A significant portion of the material is based, the newspaper says, on confidential results of Ukrainian internal audits for the years 2024–2025.
The article does not explain in detail how the American outlet gained access to those documents. But that circumstance alone does not change the main point: many of the episodes cited have long been partially known in Ukraine from open sources, court cases, and previous investigations.
That is why the piece is hard to dismiss as an external information attack or a random collection of stories.
The New York Times describes a system in which problematic contractors continue to receive new contracts even after failed deliveries, criminal cases, and fraud accusations. And if the picture presented in the article even roughly corresponds to reality, the issue is no longer just individual corruption episodes, but the logic of how military procurement operates.
One of the newspaper’s interviewees, American anti-corruption expert James Wasserstrom, put it in the bluntest terms: “In Ukraine they’ll steal everything that isn’t nailed down.”
The phrase is crude, but the point of the piece is exactly that: the system not only permits abuses but often continues to operate as if previous failures never occurred.
Billion-dollar losses
In the New York Times’ subheadline it cites the main figure: in just 2024, Ukraine, according to internal checks, lost about 1,2 billion dollars due to fraud, embezzlement, and mismanagement in military procurement.
The newspaper says it obtained over 700 pages of financial tables, audit remarks, and other documents. They cover the years 2024 and 2025 and provide, in the outlet’s assessment, one of the most detailed pictures of problems in the defense procurement system.
This is not about a single scandalous contract.
Auditors found dozens of cases where companies received state funds without proving the ability to fulfill orders, without necessary licenses, or while already having a history of failed deals.
A particularly telling figure: seven of the ten largest military contractors in Ukraine received new orders despite open criminal proceedings, previous contract failures, or arrests of executives in corruption cases.
In any normal system that would automatically trigger a red flag.
In the Ukrainian system, if the documents are to be believed, it often did not.
Mines that didn’t explode
One of the most striking episodes concerns mortar rounds.
In 2024 Ukrainian artillerymen received thousands of munitions that turned out to be defective. Some rounds did not explode after impact; others had problems during firing.
The manufacturer was a Ukrainian plant whose director, Leonid Shyman, was later arrested and accused in one of the loudest fraud cases in military procurement.
But then the most interesting part begins.
Even after product problems became obvious, the Defense Procurement Agency continued to sign new contracts with Shyman’s plant.
According to The New York Times, he was already under investigation by several anti-corruption bodies when he received his first large contract to supply mortar rounds. The deal amounted to about 280 million dollars, and Shyman at that time was out on bail in another corruption case.
This is one of those instances where it is hard to explain the problem purely as bureaucratic negligence.
Failed a contract — got a new one
In internal audits by the State Audit Service and the Ministry of Defense, auditors describe a system in which failure to meet obligations often had no serious consequences.
They found 18 companies that received new deals despite having not fulfilled previous ones. Six of them, according to the audits, had not fulfilled any contract at all.
Yet they remained in the state procurement system.
Companies could receive orders without confirming production capabilities, licenses, or access to the goods they promised to supply. Even clear risk signals sometimes did not prevent contract awards.
This is where it becomes clear why defense procurement is a much more serious issue than ordinary corruption statistics.
Every unfulfilled contract is not just lost budget.
It is shells, missiles, drones, or other weaponry that did not make it to the front when needed.
126 million in overpayments
About 126 million dollars more, auditors say, was lost due to ignoring cheaper offers and overpaying for weapons.
The New York Times gives a very illustrative example.
In 2024 the Defense Procurement Agency announced a tender for rockets for multiple-launch rocket systems. Three suppliers offered essentially identical goods — rockets produced at the same Turkish plant.
The only difference was price.
One company offered about 4200 dollars per rocket. The second about 4600. The third about 5100 dollars.
The cheapest offer came from the Turkish manufacturer Arca Defense itself.
One would think the choice was obvious.
But the contract, auditors say, went to the company that offered the highest price — a subsidiary of the large Czech defense holding Czechoslovak Group.
That is, instead of buying directly from the manufacturer, the state agreed to pay an intermediary extra.
Auditors said they found “no grounds” for such a decision.
Their calculations suggest it could have increased Ukraine’s costs by approximately 130 million dollars.
Doing business on Ukraine’s war
For Czechoslovak Group, Ukrainian orders became one of the main sources of growth.
In 2024 over 40% of the company’s revenue was linked to sales to Ukraine. The holding later went public, and its 33-year majority owner Michal Strnad became one of the richest arms suppliers in Forbes’ lists.
There is, of course, nothing illegal about that.
Defense companies profit from wars — that is how the industry works.
The question is why Ukraine, in certain cases, agreed to pay more for goods it could have bought cheaper directly from the manufacturer.
Especially after previous audits had already warned against an excessive role for intermediaries.
Despite this, Ukraine, the newspaper reports, even considered a new contract with Czechoslovak Group — this time possibly to replace part of Kalashnikov assault rifles with Czech models in NATO calibers.
Intermediaries that are hard to get rid of
One of the auditors’ main complaints concerns trading intermediaries.
In the report for 2024 the State Audit Service sharply criticized the practice of procurement through companies that do not manufacture weapons but merely resell them at a markup.
According to the auditors’ estimate, such markups often amounted to at least 3%.
At the scale of multi-billion defense procurements, even a few percentage points become tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.
What is especially strange is that after criticism in 2024, a check at the start of 2025 again found many large contracts with intermediaries, even though in some cases the weapons could have been purchased more cheaply directly.
So the problem was known.
But the system continued to operate almost the same way.
Serbian rockets and 1,7 billion
Another complicated story concerns an attempt to purchase Soviet-type rockets from a Serbian manufacturer.
Because of Serbia’s political ties with Russia, Ukraine could not simply sign a direct contract and therefore constructed a chain of intermediaries.
The main Ukrainian participant was the state-owned Spetstechnoexport.
The problem was that, according to auditors, the company already had a history of failing to fulfill contracts, and its executives were involved in cases of possible embezzlement and money laundering.
In addition, Spetstechnoexport, the documents note, did not have the necessary Serbian export license.
Despite this, the company received preferences.
Auditors say they found no proper legal justification for them.
Later Spetstechnoexport signed a subcontract with the American arms company Regulus Global.
The total amount of several contracts between them reached about 1,7 billion dollars.
But the rockets deal began to fall apart.
Attempt to remove an extra link
Then Defense Minister Rustem Umerov tried to reduce the number of intermediaries and proposed that Regulus work directly with the state procurement agency.
This effectively meant excluding Spetstechnoexport from the chain.
However, the contract ultimately collapsed.
By the start of 2025, auditors concluded Spetstechnoexport had become the largest debtor to the procurement agency and had more unfulfilled contracts than any other supplier.
This example illustrates another systemic problem well.
You can criticize intermediaries for years, but once they are embedded in complex international supply schemes, removing them from the process proves much more difficult.
600 drones not delivered — ordered another 1950
One of the most illustrative episodes concerns unmanned aerial vehicles.
A company was supposed to deliver 600 specialized drones but did not fulfill its obligations.
One would think that after such a failure, the supplier would at least temporarily lose the ability to receive new state contracts.
Instead the company won another order — this time for 1950 drones.
Of that number, only 50 were delivered on time.
Auditors, The New York Times reports, did not explain why the company received a second contract after the first failure.
Former officials and experts quoted by the newspaper explain such cases by corruption and weak management.
But even without proven corrupt intent, the managerial conclusion is obvious.
The system almost did not punish failure.
They bought what the manufacturer could not supply
Another contract concerned unguided aviation rockets of caliber 70 mm.
A middleman promised to supply them from Turkey.
The problem was that the Turkish manufacturer warned the Ukrainian side: the volumes the intermediary promised could not be provided.
Despite this, the contract was signed.
The situation then became even more serious.
The forces received weapons without sufficient test verification, and one rocket exploded directly in the launch tube and severely damaged a Ukrainian Mi-8 helicopter during a combat mission.
A criminal investigation followed.
In this case the cost of a bad contract was measured not only in money.
Fedorov and the question of responsibility
A separate part of the piece concerns former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov.
The New York Times presents him as an official who tried to reform the system and who, after his dismissal, said defense contractors had effectively pushed him out of office for his attempts at change.
“Corruption is thriving,” the paper quotes Fedorov as saying.
This version should be treated with caution.
The Defense Procurement Agency was subordinated to the Ministry of Defense during Fedorov’s tenure. So any discussion about fighting corruption inevitably raises the question of why systemic problems continued during his term.
That does not mean the minister is automatically personally responsible for every contract.
But the political responsibility of the head of an agency does not disappear simply because, after dismissal, he talks about institutional resistance.
Zhumadilov resigned
Arsen Zhumadilov, director of the Defense Procurement Agency, declined to comment on The New York Times’ findings.
The paper also notes that on Monday he tendered his resignation.
By itself, that fact, of course, does not prove a link between the audits and his decision.
But it adds political weight to the story.
Especially because one of the main conclusions of internal reviews is very simple: it is unclear what exactly the procurement agency did in response to the discovered violations.
The documents were classified, so there was effectively no broad public oversight of whether recommendations were implemented.
And that is a separate problem.
If an audit finds billion-dollar losses but its results remain closed, society cannot understand either the scale of the problem or whether it has been corrected.
War as justification
All countries waging large wars face corruption, inflated prices, poor-quality suppliers, and chaotic procurement.
Ukraine is no exception.
Moreover, some problems can be explained objectively.
At the start of the full-scale war weapons had to be bought immediately, often in scarcity, through complex schemes, from little-known suppliers and at inflated prices.
But that argument weakens with each year of the war.
By 2024–2025 there were already specialized agencies, accumulated experience, audits, international assistance, and a much more mature system of public administration.
So repeating the same mistakes is increasingly hard to explain solely by extraordinary circumstances.
Especially when a company fails a contract and then receives a new one.
Why this is dangerous now
The New York Times piece has another politically unpleasant context.
All these losses occurred while Volodymyr Zelenskyy was constantly appealing to allies for more weapons and funding.
Those are entirely justified appeals for Ukraine.
But to a Western voter the picture looks different: their government allocates tens of billions to Kyiv, and then a leading American paper reports billion-dollar losses due to inefficiency and fraud.
Even if these sums are a small part of total defense spending, the political effect can be much larger.
Especially in countries where support for Ukraine has already become the subject of intense domestic struggle.
That is why corruption in defense procurement is no longer only an internal Ukrainian problem.
It directly affects Kyiv’s ability to obtain external support.
Money you don’t have twice
Former adviser to the Defense Procurement Agency Tamerlan Vakhabov explained the problem to The New York Times in the most practical terms.
If a contract fails or weapons are bought at inflated prices, the army does not get what it needs, and the budget is already spent.
There is then no money to simply order the same munitions again.
For a country fighting a war of attrition this is critical.
Russia can compensate for some of its mistakes with a huge budget, resource base, and scale of production.
Ukraine does not have that luxury.
Every extra hundred million spent on intermediaries or failed contracts is money that will not be available for additional air-defense missiles, shells, drones, or equipment repairs.
In peacetime this would be called poor management.
In a major war the consequences are far worse.
Corruption as a system
The most unpleasant conclusion from The New York Times’ publication is not even the figure of 1,2 billion dollars.
Money can be counted, some can be recovered through courts, and the guilty can—in theory at least—be punished.
It is much harder to fix a system in which a previous failure does not necessarily bar a company from new contracts, and auditors’ warnings do not guarantee that the same scheme won’t recur a year later.
That is what makes the story dangerous.
If a company failed to deliver 600 drones and then was awarded another 1950, the problem is no longer only with a particular company.
If the cheapest offer from a manufacturer is rejected in favor of a more expensive intermediary without a clear explanation, the question is no longer just about the intermediary.
If a firm supplies defective munitions but continues to win contracts, it is a question for the entire oversight system.
Corruption becomes systemic not when an official takes a bribe once.
It becomes systemic when rules, incentives, and accountability allow the same failures to repeat again and again.
That is the picture The New York Times paints.
And if Ukraine wants to convince partners that every additional billion in aid truly brings it closer to victory, the response to this piece cannot be limited to more words about reforms.
It is necessary to show why problematic companies kept getting contracts, who made those decisions, which audit recommendations were implemented, and who was held accountable for the ones that were ignored.
Because during a war, corruption in defense procurement is not just theft of public money.
It is weaponry that may not be on the front when needed.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "«В Україні вкрадуть навіть прибите цвяхами»: The New York Times про корупцію на військових закупівлях". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Expert.
