The Defense Ministry and law enforcement agencies continue to carry out surprise inspections in regional enlistment offices and food warehouses and have already found many violations, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov wrote on Jan. 28 on Facebook.
Multiple cases of power abuse, illegal enrichment, and corruption in Ukraine's military enlistment offices have been reported since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.
Under its previous leadership, the Defense Ministry has also been involved in numerous corruption scandals connected to inflated prices or low-quality supplies for the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
According to Umerov, the Defense Ministry aims to fix all the drawbacks systematically and cooperates with the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the State Bureau of Investigation, and the Prosecutor General’s Office.
The defense minister did not specify which enlistment offices and warehouses have been already inspected.
The inspection uncovered violations in food delivery worth more than Hr 50 million ($1.32 million), Umerov noted. In response to discovered violations, the Defense Ministry changed the supplier of some military units.
"We will continue, and there will be more news," Umerov wrote.
The Defense Ministry also returned to the state budget Hr 1.5 billion (nearly $40 million) embezzled in an artillery shells scheme that was uncovered last week.
In the summer of 2023, a journalistic investigation uncovered that Yevhen Borysov, the former head of Odesa's military enlistment office, had acquired property worth $4.5 million in Spain during Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
A media investigation into Borysov's extensive property in Spain has sparked a nationwide inspection into illicit practices in Ukraine's military enlistment offices.
In October 2023, the National Agency on Corruption Prevention reported that six military enlistment officials were suspected of illegally acquiring assets worth over Hr 255 million ($6.7 million) in the past half a year.
Nate Ostiller
