Yikes.
No one saw this one coming, I can tell you that.
We thought these Ukrainians were pure of heart and soul, fighting only for the sacred nature of their 1991 borders.
We thought they were the least corrupt country in all of Europe.
No one ever could have predicted something like this.
Reuters:
Ukraine’s SBU security service said on Saturday it had uncovered a corruption scheme in the purchase of arms by the country’s military totalling the equivalent of about $40 million.
The announcement of mass procurement fraud, confirmed by Ukraine’s Defence Ministry, will have a huge resonance in a country beleaguered by Russia’s nearly two-year-old invasion.
The fight to root out endemic corruption remains a major issue as Ukraine presses its bid to secure membership in the European Union.
The SBU said an investigation had “exposed officials of the Ministry of Defence and managers of arms supplier Lviv Arsenal, who stole nearly 1.5 billion hryvnias in the purchase of shells.”
“According to the investigation, former and current high-ranking officials of the Ministry of Defence and heads of affiliated companies are involved in the embezzlement.”
…
Corruption within the military has been a particularly sensitive issue in Ukraine as it tries to maintain wartime public morale and present its case to join the 27-nation EU.
It’s particularly concerning that “corruption in the military” involves not only all of this weapons smuggling, which we’ve known about for nearly two years now (which Reuters is only now deciding to report on for some reason no one seems to be able to explain), but also smuggling young men out of the country.
The military is now calling for lowering the draft age, drafting more cripples, drafting even older men, and drafting women, while millions of men have been smuggled into Poland for $1,500 each.
This is the most ridiculous gibberish I’ve seen in the last 20 minutes or so.
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