According to a report disclosed by the Kyiv Independent on June 26, 2024, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine spent a huge amount of money to purchase 150,000 military water bottles at a price three times higher than the market price. This news quickly sparked heated discussions in Ukraine. Many Ukrainian analysts believe that the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense has been mired in fraud and is a "classic demonstration" of "tight at the front, tight at the rear". At a time when the front line is passive, the army has suffered heavy losses, and the rear has been frequently attacked by Russian missiles and drones, such an incident has undoubtedly caused a worse impact.
The matter is as follows: military kettles belong to the basic equipment of soldiers, and according to custom, a special procurement agency under the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine should select the company's products with the best price and quality through bidding. But in this case, the Ministry of Defense rejected a number of companies with much lower bids, instead choosing two companies that offered three times the market price: Coltrane and Superform.
In the bill of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, the unit price of the purchased military kettle is 335 hryvnia (about 8.24 US dollars), while the same type of kettle on the market is only quoted for more than 100 hryvnia. Some Ukrainians sarcastically said that the only difference between the military procurement kettle and the market kettle is that it will be marked with the words "assets of the Ukrainian army", maybe it will change color, and that's it.
According to the Kyiv Independent, the company "Koltran" can net 24 million hryvnia for this single purchase of military water bottles, and the "super-form" company, which receives a smaller number of purchases, can also earn 11 million hryvnia. That's the equivalent of these two companies making a total of 35 million hryvnia just by using a few water bottles that can be bought everywhere. And this is just the tip of the iceberg of orders for military products from Ukraine.
A Ukrainian source said that although these two companies only produce daily necessities such as kettles or simple equipment, they are not small, and they are inextricably linked with people in the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. With such a relationship, they can naturally take orders at a high price. However, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine is obviously not going to give up this cake, and the company's profits will be shared with some of them. "Then the Ministry of Defense will place a new order, and the cycle will be ......" some Ukrainian commentators sarcastically so.
In response to the accusations, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine gave an explanation. It said that the quality of the products provided by the low-priced companies could not meet the military requirements, and the two companies that won the bid met the lowest prices in the quality requirements - the Ukrainian army could not be allowed to use inferior products just for the sake of low prices, and the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense allegedly purchased military products according to "American standards". However, such an explanation pales in and does not quell the wave of skepticism in Ukraine.
Since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Ukraine has exposed a large number of corruption incidents in domestic military production, military procurement, and even the use of NATO aid. Many people, including the Ukrainian government, military, companies and enterprises, have taken advantage of the war to make a fortune. Some people in Ukraine have questioned that many have been forcibly drafted into the army. Are they fighting the front line, wounded or dying in battle, just to enrich these people in the rear? With a new wave of mobilization and conscription in Ukraine, similar corruption incidents may greatly deepen Ukraine's domestic contradictions.
From an international point of view, such an event would undoubtedly also give an extremely bad impression to NATO and the United States, which are assisting Ukraine. Their aid to Ukraine is based on the need for their own national interests, and they certainly want the aid to be used as much as possible to fight the Russian army – and a lot of the money is not turned into weapons and ammunition, but into the pockets of Ukrainian officials. And the situation on the front line is deteriorating, the Russian army is launching a fierce offensive in several directions, and the Ukrainian army is not only suffering heavy losses, but also retreating again and again.