A standoff between Ukraine’s protection minister and the official answerable for procuring weapons threatened to escalate on Monday, stirring dissent within the authorities at a crucial time because it seeks to steer President Trump to keep up American help for the conflict towards Russia.
The dispute erupted three days in the past when the minister, Rustem Umerov, stated he wouldn’t renew the contract of Maryna Bezrukova, the top of the protection procurement company, citing “unsatisfactory” outcomes. However on Monday, Ms. Bezrukova stated she would stay in her place, stating that her contract had been renewed by the company’s supervisory board and that Mr. Umerov had no proper to override that call.
The company was established to make sure transparency and effectivity in buying arms. Activists and a few lawmakers, together with a outstanding one in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s social gathering, denounced Mr. Umerov’s transfer as an abuse of energy undermining anticorruption efforts.
“The minister’s motion is a critical offense towards our laws and company governance,” Ms. Bezrukova stated in an interview over the weekend, calling it an “assault” on the company’s efforts to chop out questionable intermediaries Ukraine has generally relied on to purchase weapons through the conflict.
She reported to her workplace on Monday, and it was unclear how the standoff could be resolved.
The dispute threatens to weaken a corporation that managed over $7 billion in weapons procurement final 12 months and had change into a associate for Western allies channeling funds into Ukraine’s rising protection business — a brand new initiative Kyiv goals to develop as a substitute for dwindling arms provides from the West.
Western diplomats in Kyiv had been assembly with authorities and company officers on Monday to debate the procurement state of affairs, in keeping with a number of attendees, who spoke anonymously to debate non-public deliberations. In the meantime, the top of the Ukrainian parliament’s anticorruption committee has called for Mr. Umerov’s resignation.
The Ukrainian protection ministry didn’t reply to a request for remark. It appears unlikely that Mr. Umerov will resign, as Mr. Zelensky has not provided any criticism up to now.
This isn’t the primary time the Ukrainian authorities has moved to oust officials with responsibility for reforming state institutions, a few of whose efforts have brought on inside friction. Final 12 months, as an illustration, Oleksandr Kubrakov was fired as infrastructure minister for causes by no means made clear.
However the try and dismiss Ms. Bezrukova comes as Ukraine is struggling to ship sufficient weapons to its troops on the entrance and faces the danger of shedding very important arms provides from its key ally, the US.
Activists are additionally involved it sends the mistaken message to Western companions, significantly U.S. Republicans, who’ve lengthy expressed issues about corruption in Ukraine. “What minister Umerov is doing is sabotaging our protection capabilities and our capability to maintain the belief of our worldwide companions concerning weapons procurement,” stated Daria Kaleniuk, the chief director of Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Motion Middle.
Mr. Umerov stated in a post on Facebook that the company had failed within the “well timed provide of ammunition to our military” and had as a substitute change into embroiled in “political video games, leaks of contracts, and leaks of knowledge.” He didn’t present particular examples.
Tamerlan Vahabov, a former adviser to Ms. Bezrukova who resigned final 12 months, additionally criticized the company, saying it had generally did not successfully consider contracts. He asserted that the company leaned too closely on buying from state firms as a substitute of immediately sourcing from non-public suppliers.
Ms. Bezrukova was appointed on the head of the protection procurement company a 12 months in the past, after Mr. Umerov took over as protection minister. He promised to root out corruption within the ministry following a collection of revelations about mismanaged contracts for weapons and basic supplies such as food.
The principle job of Ms. Bezrukova, who’s a former high supervisor on the nationwide electrical energy firm, was to remove intermediaries — typically shady arms dealers who were inflating prices. She stated the company had reduced Ukrainian intermediaries’ share of procurements from 81 % in 2023 to only 12 % final 12 months. These figures couldn’t be independently verified.
Ms. Bezrukova stated her work led to tensions with the ministry. She claimed that protection officers pressured her to signal a contract with a state-owned Ukrainian weapons manufacturing facility that lacked the employees and gunpowder to supply mortar shells. After being produced and despatched to the entrance, many shells failed to fireplace, setting off a major scandal in Ukraine.
The protection ministry acknowledged that simply over 20,000 shells had been withdrawn. However others believed the determine was a lot larger.
Mr. Vahabov stated that even when she confronted stress, Ms. Bezrukova ought to have been extra vocal in opposing the contract. He additionally stated that she might have carried out extra due diligence controls of manufacturing of the weapons on the manufacturing facility. He claimed there have been many “normative and administrative points” with the company’s construction that hindered the procurement work.
Ms. Bezrukova stated she had hoped that the creation of a supervisory board on the company late final 12 months, a transfer applauded by Western companions, would assist safeguard her independence. “I don’t need to be window dressing or a reputational washer,” she stated within the interview Saturday.
Nonetheless, a day earlier than the board’s first assembly, on Dec. 17, the protection ministry amended the company’s constitution, successfully granting the ministry closing authority over a lot of the board’s selections. “They de facto sterilized the board’s authority,” stated Yuriy Dzhygyr, the chairman of the board and a former deputy of Mr. Umerov.
After the supervisory board voted final week to increase Ms. Bezrukova’s contract for one 12 months, Mr. Umerov stated he wouldn’t renew her contract and introduced the dismissal of two state representatives on the board, together with Mr. Dzhygyr.
Ms. Kaleniuk, the anticorruption activist, stated the constitution doesn’t grant the protection ministry a say in extending the company head’s contract. The constitution, reviewed by The New York Instances, does, nevertheless, permit the protection ministry to dismiss any company official “within the occasion of recognized current or potential threats to Ukraine’s nationwide safety.”
It stays unclear on what authorized grounds Mr. Umerov determined to fireplace Ms. Bezrukova.
With Western companions, particularly European ones, unable to provide all of the weapons Ukraine wants, the company has helped enact an initiative that makes use of Western funds to pay for contracts signed with native arms producers. The protection ministry stated that greater than half a billion {dollars}’ price of weapons were produced by way of this new mechanism final 12 months.
Whether or not that new mechanism will proceed working given the present standoff is unclear.
“That is the worst attainable time for Kyiv to show again the clock on a protection reform success story: when Ukraine wants further funding for weapons and cynical opponents in Moscow and in sure quarters of Washington are on the lookout for causes to solid doubt upon the integrity of Ukrainian protection governance,” the German Marshall Fund of the US, a analysis establishment, said.
Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting.
