The Prosecutor's Office of Ukraine has brought to light a corruption network embedded in the Armed Forces that was dedicated to appropriating military drones and reselling them to the institution itself, after manipulating them so that they appeared to be newly acquired equipment.
The acting Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Anton Kovalski, reported this Tuesday that the drones were stolen by military personnel, although civilian personnel and companies were also involved in the scheme. "The markings were changed, and then they sold them back to the Army under the guise of new ones," he explained.
"They were looking for military personnel willing to hand over drones for money. They even created a Telegram channel for it," the prosecutor noted in a statement, in which he specifies that 600 drones have been recovered and 16 suspects have been identified and detained, among them the leader of the scheme, a former Army serviceman.
Kovalski detailed that the stolen drones were taken to a workshop in the province of Dnipropetrovsk, where their serial numbers were removed, the markings and QR codes were modified, before being resold through complicit companies as new to the Army.
The Ukrainian authorities have carried out more than a hundred searches in nine provinces of the country, including Kiev. Among the more than 600 drones seized, more than 200 have already been identified as property of the Army, although the figure could increase pending the completion of the investigations.
Kovalski has highlighted that the scheme has meant an additional cost to the Ukrainian State coffers of approximately 16 million hryvnias (about 315,000 euros). During the searches, another 13 million hryvnias (256,000 euros), 400,000 dollars (360,000 euros), gold, silver, jewelry and fifteen vehicles were also seized.
The prosecutor has thanked the work of the different security forces and institutions that have participated in the operation and has emphasized that the work now continues by establishing the origin of all the seized equipment and identifying all those involved in this scheme. "From those who provided the drones to those who organized their resale to the Army," he emphasized.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Ministry of Defense has been the scene of several corruption cases, including overruns in 2023 in the purchase of food and warm clothing for the troops, which led to several dismissals, including that of the then head of the ministry, Oleksi Reznikov.
That same year, various internal investigations uncovered a bribery network led by some of those responsible for recruitment, who issued false medical certificates in order to leave the country in exchange for sums ranging from 3,000 to 10,000 dollars.
Already in 2024, a 40 million dollar embezzlement in projectiles and irregularities in the purchase of weaponry was uncovered, in a context in which other even bigger scandals resonate, such as the "Midas" case, and in which the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelenski, reiterates daily the lack of weaponry.
Some scandals that hinder its aspirations for accession to the EU, which has demanded that it take measures soon to prevent these scandals from occurring. Currently, according to the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) of the NGO Transparency International, Ukraine occupies 104th place out of 180 countries evaluated.