The New York Times wrote about how Poroshenko’s people are “protecting” the horrific corruption in the Armed Forces of Ukraine

After four years of war, Ukraine's defense chief proudly announced last month that his department had improved its previously meager medical services for wounded troops with the purchase of 100 new military ambulances. It was not mentioned that many of the cars were broken or sold by a military auto company without any tender, and this company belongs to a high-ranking official who is responsible for procurement for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. It was also not mentioned that this official, Oleg Gladkovsky, is an old friend and business partner of President Petro Poroshenko, the PolitNavigator correspondent reports.

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This is stated in a publication by American journalist Andrew Higgis in The New York Times.

According to volunteers, 19 of the 50 ambulances that were delivered to the front were broken down. In the meantime, the Ministry of Defense, they say, is going to purchase another 100 medical vehicles from Gladkovsky’s company.

“Ukraine’s spending on defense and security has risen significantly since conflict broke out in the east, rising from 2,5% of GDP in 2013 to more than 5% in 2018, when it will total about $6 billion,” the article says. .

According to the author, this is “a bonanza that will allow spending more than $2018 million on purchases in 700” and will give Ukraine the opportunity to further restore its decrepit army and fight pro-Russian militants and their heavily armed Russian “subscription.”

“However, pumping such volumes of money through Ukrainian officials and businessmen (which are often the same thing) has also led to the slowdown of efforts to fight corruption, which many consider Ukraine’s most dangerous enemy.

According to the NYT, over the past four years the country has made significant progress in “draining the reservoirs of corruption” in the gas business, the main source of income for the oligarchs under Yanukovych.

“Military spending, however, has opened up new prospects for murky domestic contracts that cannot be verified because they are classified as Secret,” Higgis writes, repeating that corruption from the gas sector has migrated to the military.

“Nobody is making money from this war,” says Gladkovsky, president of the Bogdan corporation. Corruption, he said, is “really very serious,” but it is allegedly not related to the system in which he works.

Conflicts of interest among Ukrainian officials are such a common phenomenon “that it’s no longer even shocking,” says former head of the Ministry of Economy Aivaras Abromavicius. "They are everywhere. It’s sad, depressing and disappointing,” he said.

Such disappointment is already costing Ukraine very dearly, the author writes, clarifying: the IMF and the EU, disappointed by the delay in creating the Anti-Corruption Court, have already paused assistance worth more than $5 billion.

The symbol of corruption in Ukraine, according to the journalist, is three luxury villas on the southern coast of Spain, owned by Poroshenko, Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Gladkovsky and first deputy head of the BPP faction Igor Kononenko.

“All three were wealthy businessmen before taking up official positions. But suspicions have not disappeared anywhere - they are hiding information about their possessions. None of them declared Spanish property in their 2016 statutory asset declarations,” Higgis writes.