[000:00:00;00] intelligence, which corrects, points to the targets, but the situation is really, really very difficult , because despite the huge number of losses, the russians, albeit slowly, but in certain directions are advancing, simply using their numerical advantage, numerous, or rather, an advantage in forces and means, i.e. both in personnel and equipment. serhii, despite the fact that russia is pulling resources to bakhmut, and the largest number of personnel was activated near avdiivka. anyway, there actually a quarter of all troops are concentrated on in the lyman-kupyan direction, 100,000 out of 400. that was the last information, and why is russia holding reserves, will they advance, or just to prevent their reserves from being taken away, well, i don't know how relevant this number is true, this is the number that was announced, i know, i remember, yes, but i am not sure that it is completely

true today, but it really is. a large enough force, for which the russians are getting a large enough force there, for, well , again, it is to bind our units, our units in order not to allow them to be transferred to another direction of the front line, on the other hand, the russians believe that they have a certain operational advantage there, which will allow them, in principle, under favorable circumstances, at least to capture... half kupinska, why half, because the city is divided in half, well, relatively speaking, it is cut in half by the river, to take it completely due to the presence of a water obstacle, which is a natural barrier , which is very difficult to do, especially there, for example, in autumn or winter, especially but they believe that they have opportunities to advance there, and in general , this direction is very important for them, because in fact it is the junction of three regions, donetsk, luhansk,

kharkiv, and the one who owns and has an advantage, relatively speaking, has a much larger maneuver, much more opportunity for an offensive in different directions, relatively speaking , starting from the kharkiv direction and ending there in the direction of sloviansk, kupinsk, sloviansk-kramatorsk, excuse me, and through liman, uh, through control of liman , that's why it's so, you know, very important crossroads, well, obviously russian generals, i'm at the russian general staff, i don't know their plans. huh, they're giving that direction a lot of importance, and that's why they keep a lot of troops there. serhii, well, let’s move from the situation at the front to the article that is currently being very actively discussed in ukrainian society, i will point out for the audience that this is an article by simon shuster in the time magazine, he analyzes the situation, the prospects for ukraine there, and i think that most of our viewers have already watched it, or at least read about it in other media,

and what are yours, how correctly do you think what is happening at the front in the ukrainian political system is described? how correctly it describes what happens at the meetings of the stake or in the offices of the president's office, i cannot assess, because i am not a member of the stake, i do not attend the meetings of the national security council or the meetings of the stake there, so say how it corresponds or not corresponds to reality, it is also difficult for me to judge how sincere the interlocutors of mr. schuster from the office of the president were, it is also difficult for me to judge, because i am not i know who they are talking about and the things they are discussing are unknown to me, these details, if we are talking about generalized things, about general things, it is clear that, well, let's say this, there are a certain number of circumstances, a certain number of facts, she, i know if there is fatigue with ukraine in the west, it definitely is

, and western leaders, in principle , do not even... i am tired of ukraine, but the more often they are they repeat, the more they convince us that such fatigue exists, in fact, sociological surveys in many countries, a certain change of mood in societies, it is obvious, whether a military serviceman has fatigue, it definitely exists, and this is not news either. we know very well that there is a whole series of military units, the personnel of which have been fighting for one and a half years, in fact without rotation, with minimal intervals of time, when the brigades, if they are lucky, are taken out to restore combat capability, so that the fighters exhale two- three weeks, do these people have fatigue, inhuman fatigue, yes, is there a problem with the supply of weapons, armed, yes, this is also not news, therefore, if we are talking about

some general things, then i did not see anything extremely new there for myself, once again i say, if it is about the specific circumstances of the conversation, i cannot comment, i cannot speak about their correctness, because these circumstances are unknown to me, uh, well, just about the specific circumstances, i understand that you cannot comment, but one way or another, here this phrase: "he deceives himself," shuster writes, quoting allegedly zelskyi's advisor, saying that everyone around them knows that the war cannot be won, but no one dares to tell zelskyi about it. do you think that there is a certain information vacuum in the military-political leadership of the country? how true can this be? i can't imagine an information vacuum for the supreme commander and chairman. national security and defense council. ugh. even theoretically, he is the bearer of the largest mass of information in this country, because he is the only person who receives the completeness of information, another such person simply does not exist. there are people, there are

channels, receiving this information, but the only person who receives all the information from all the intelligence services, from all the analysts, from all the centers that exist, is the president of ukraine. it is hard enough for me to imagine that he does not have some information. there you can argue about the interpretation of this information, about the conclusions drawn by those analysts who provide him with this information, or about his own interpretation or conclusions, but i cannot imagine an information vacuum, if i speak about the difficult situation, yes, it is really difficult, winning a war, especially in the foreseeable future against a country that has such a huge resource, is actually difficult, it is objective, but when zelensky's point of view is cited, well, in fact, there is a part it's with direct reference to him, part of it is with indirect when he says that any appeasement, cessation of war, any appeasement in any way,

is just a postponement of the problem, well, i agree with him, i would really like the victory to be as soon as possible, i would really like to became peaceful as quickly as possible, but maybe from the very beginning it was not necessary to warm up the society, i am not reprimanding anyone now, i just voiced my thoughts, and with stories about some quick victory there, from the very beginning to prepare for the fact that the war will be difficult, heavy and bloody, huh, then maybe psychologically many people, including, excuse me, people in power, people in high offices, who also want to believe in easy solutions, maybe it would be easier for them too, but you mentioned the fatigue. .. exists in the west, do you as a people's deputy feel it at the same level parliamentary cooperation, and this is the decrease in attention to the russian-ukrainian war in the west, what is it related to banal human fatigue with certain time limits, or

is it a question of a decrease in some kind of trust in ukraine? i am a very bad source of information for you in this matter, i do not really understand what you understand by the words parliamentary cooperation, parliamentary cooperation is quite limited now, well at least i... communicate very little, communicate exclusively with or with representatives of embassies or with representatives, i don't know the profile ones there committees, if i recall to you five meetings in a year and a half, that's probably all , so i'm definitely not someone who keeps his hands on the pulse, can say, it's firstly, secondly, parliaments are not an indicator, in fact the best, best of all, it should be understood by the president and diplomats, why, because they communicate with the first persons, with those people on whom the approval depends. the point of view of some deputy, even if i talked to him, this is an unrepresentative story, is there fatigue, well, yes , there is fatigue, well, listen, well, you don’t need to have a personal analytical center here, so that it

to understand, this is an absolutely obvious thing, but this fatigue does not mean that it is not necessary to convince partners, to remind them of the price of the issue, forgive me for such a phrase, for the world, for europe, not only for us, for us it is clear. therefore, yes, fatigue is a natural history and in fact we were warned about the possibility of such fatigue, but this is not a reason not to make certain efforts, i know that such efforts are being made, but it is increasingly difficult to explain to our partners due to a whole series of circumstances, let's say so , spread of influence populists in some countries, on close elections in other countries, on the unstable financial... or economic situation in third countries, on the presence of other factors, such as the problems of china and taiwan, or, for example, the actual outbreak of a new war in the middle east, everything is clear, all these circumstances are

there, they are complicated, they fundamentally complicate our lives, but this does not mean that the people on whom it depends should stop being active in communicating with partners, it is not inevitable, well, for us no, not even if we are going to develop as much as possible, this must be done, such attempts are to develop our own defense and industrial complex, to fully meet the needs of the defense forces in a war with such a resource-rich enemy that also relies on resources. from other countries, as it is generally known, we will not receive transfers, we need, we need both financial and military assistance. serhii, well, i can’t help but ask, we literally have a couple of minutes left, but today the ministry of defense reported that as a result of a random inspection, about 40 units discovered abuses amounting to uah 123 million, and these abuses are related to the fact that commanders at their own discretion charged additional payments for alleged participation in hostilities, but charged them in the rear. that is, for the performance of combat tasks that did not exist, are

the people's deputies of the defense committee aware of, including the ongoing abuses and - in fact, what to do with it? well, not what is known, in our country at least three times, if i am not mistaken, we paid attention to this issue, i will explain, in fact, this issue is longer and more complicated than it appears at first glance, first of all, not the fact that this would be an abuse, and i will explain why, the fact is that at one time, for the first time, we met and called the relevant officials from the ministry of defense of the armed forces of ukraine, the issue of additional payments, the issue of payments, it is regulated by a cabinet resolution and a corresponding order of the minister of defense, but this order, by the way, was corrected several times during the war. so , it is written in such a way that even in the brigades, we have repeatedly complained that they do not understand to whom exactly, according to what principle, exactly

they should count, that is, the law, more precisely, the order of the minister of defense is written in such a way that it provides for a double interpretation, and therefore these enumerations, on the one hand, it could be an abuse, and on the other hand, well, someone just took advantage of the bilingualism of the law, it is not, let's put it this way, abuse is frank, but this is a certain manipulation, let's call it that , and we have, for example , there were certain categories of servicemen who perform combat tasks and cannot always count on 100,000, but there are categories of servicemen, who do not perform combat tasks in the literal sense of the word, but can receive such payments, what can be done about it , i say again, we have said this repeatedly, we had a state secretary of the ministry of defense who is responsible for this issue in the ministry of defense, he said, that he will hold a meeting with the nachfins, explain to them exactly how to calculate , write them a road map, write them ... instructions, after the situation, let 's just say, has not improved, at least

considering the number of complaints that we received, we had contact with him again, that's another plus of the previous minister, that is, it was about state secretary of the ministry of defense vashchenko, who said that they would once again consult with the armed forces, they would come, find points of contact, and in fact, if you know, since recently certain changes have appeared in the law, which was approved by the verkhovna rada, but these changes will be transferred to the order of the ministry of defense, but as far as i know, they have not been introduced yet , for what reasons i do not know, i'm sorry, the leadership has changed, and we will talk about it today, so far, well, the order still not clear how to read, so it's not always abuse, well, conventionally speaking, it's not always theft, sometimes it's just manipulation, but it seems to me that in the conditions of war there should not be such manipulations, heard, thank you very much sergey for joining the broadcast, we just we will also talk about this with the deputy minister of defense, thank you very much, serhiy rakhmanin, people

's deputy of ukraine from the voice faction and member of the defense committee was in direct contact with us. so, more details about abuses, which as they say, are not necessarily abuses for one hundred million hryvnias, which were discovered in the ministry of defense as a result of an internal audit. it is about the fact, i will explain, that the agency conducted a random inspection of approximately 40 military units. as it turned out. the commanders of some military units paid additional remuneration for combat operations or a combat mission at their discretion. therefore, servicemen who did not perform any combat tasks and did not take part in hostilities were unlawfully charged 123 million hryvnias. for example, in one of the cases it was possible to find out that military personnel of the pontoon-bridge company, which performed tasks in the kyiv region, already a few months after the retreat of the russian troops from the capital, for some reason you paid a monthly supplement of 100,000. similarly

, the commanders charged additional remuneration to the servicemen who were at the point of permanent deployment in kyiv and performed daily tasks according to their positions. i will add that one of the reasons for this situation in the ministry of defense is that the terminology of participation in hostilities and combat mission is not sufficiently clear and unambiguous. in fact, this has just been confirmed to us people's deputy, because they say that these concepts are blurred, it allows paying a 30,000 uah bonus to those who do not perform any combat tasks, well, for example, accountants, the personnel department, etc., in particular, outside the combat zone, well, just now to our yuriy dzhigyr, deputy minister of defense of ukraine, joins the broadcast, mr. yuriy, my congratulations, i thank you very much for joining the broadcast, congratulations, colleagues, well, actually, i think you listened with us to the last part of the conversation with the deputy, in you as a representative of the ministry of defense, tell me please, what scale can we be talking about, if the inspections are not 40

random military units, but if the inspections are all-encompassing, well, i would like to avoid entering the hypothetical zone, and the situation is now that we have conducted selective inspections in 44 units of 123 billion abuses, this is a total child, a million, i'm sorry, the amount is serious enough, taking into account the selectivity of the traces, the selectivity of the checks, accordingly, we will react in the direction of finding systems for a systemic solution to this problem. mr. yuriy, how often are such events held audits, was this audit actually carried out completely... by a new team, or did it start during the time of minister reznikov? well, the internal audit service works on a regular basis, but last year the internal audit service identified additional payments for combat operations as high-risk and, accordingly, the audit plan was included in

the annual internal audit plan, during the current year these audits were carried out, the results were transmitted as before official response to the higher command, as well as to law enforcement agencies. as of now, we are summarizing the results of the internal audits, although some audits are still ongoing in november, but already we can see that these are not isolated cases, and there are factors that systematically created an environment that enabled such abuses and created the corresponding incentives and temptations for certain officials to manipulate the system, and what are these factors , this is the imperfection of the prescribed terminology, as you noted, because mr. rakhmanin in the conversation previously said that there was no appropriate reaction from the ministry of defense when they they also appealed to the previous minister regarding the need to introduce

certain terminology at the level of the ministry. yes, in our opinion, now the key factors that have led to this situation are unclear wording and unclear definitions of participation. in combat tasks and participation in combat actions and combat tasks, this vagueness actually allows them to be interpreted freely, and this leads to unreasonable payments for actions that are weakly related to combat operations, so we are currently in consultations with general staff we are preparing the solutions we can, which will clearly prescribe these formulations. and prevent further abuse. i just want to clarify, the ministry of defense is preparing a decision, what next , who approves them, who coordinates them, when can we talk about the fact that these loopholes for manipulation that you mentioned will become impossible? in the near future, in the near future, we

will show a solution, and within the government , we will significantly, at least, significantly narrow the field for these manipulations, and maybe we will completely eliminate it. but this is not about what money from the military will be taken back, well, there have already been cases when allowances were canceled, then returned , no, about the further reaction of those cases that have been established, the results are forwarded to the law enforcement agencies and they deal with them and will determine the mechanics how it happened, what, to whom, how and for what reasons, and, accordingly, the response measures, and our task, the task of internal audit and the task of the ministry of defense are systemic solutions that, well, practically at the moment, are already in a state final work, internal audit, despite the fact that it establishes these facts, it informs us, and passes it on to both the command and law enforcement agencies for response, but the main task of internal audit

within the ministry of defense is to highlight systemic problems and provide recommendations for , how to solve these system problems and now we are at the stage of the final system solution. ugh. mr. yuryu, well, actually , mr. rahmanin mp mentioned, that they have it, there may not necessarily be abuses, and manipulations, so to speak, you too, mention manipulations, in the context of this problem, but i think that it will not be news for many, what are the charges that the teams make for combat tasks that did not exist, the teams take to withdraw employees from the same military forces, and here comes such a certain closed circle, maybe even a circular guarantee, what is the mechanism here, you are talking about systemic decisions, but at this stage, whose responsibility is this and who should make the decisions? whether these teams, which counted 100,000 each for combat operations, which there was no, will they perform staff work in

the rear? well, we're somewhat in the realm of conjecture, the key to this whole situation is to report the facts, if, if you know about the facts of the kickbacks, ah, report it to the ministry of defense hotline, and we 've established cases of abuse, and the results will follow the audit is submitted to the high command and law enforcement agencies for an official investigation, and we monitor how they react to the results of the internal audit, both on the part of law enforcement agencies and on the side of the high command, relevant official checks are carried out by the command, there are already established cases, and disciplinary, disciplinary response should take place, that is, certain teams are suspended from the performance of their duties, as a result of an official internal investigation, in addition to this , law enforcement agencies are working, and accordingly,

if the cases you are talking about are established, the case is transferred, the results of the investigation are transferred to the court, and in the case of proof, proof of guilt, the court sets the degree of punishment, and here all options are possible, ugh, this is the responsibility of the dbbr, yes, i want to clarify, no, this is a specialized prosecutor's office on the matter, ugh, and finally. mr. yuri, here is this ambiguous terminology, which is complained about, which allows for abuse, whether the manipa is manipulated , whether the more precise prescribed legislation will solve the problem, or the systemic solutions that you propose, you think, will solve it, that is, the main reason of this situation that has arisen, it is precisely the lack of clarity of wording and a certain uncontrolled discretion of officials, the defined circles of recipients of combat payments, the solution we offer these are clear formulations, clear criteria for who receives combat payments and for what, which will make it impossible for arbitrary interpretations and abuses in this

system. heard, mr. yuriy, once again thank you very much for joining the air, we were not spoiled so much by your predecessors, so i hope that we will communicate with you more often, because the hypothetical questions that you are talking about, are they really this is the request of society, the answers that ukrainians want to hear today. thank you very much, yuriy dzhigyr, deputy. of defense of ukraine was with we are in direct contact. well, at the same time, the accounting chamber today confirmed abuses in the ministry of defense itself , it is about overpricing in the procurement of products in the ministry of defense, which was previously reported by journalists to the anti-corruption organization, the report is currently at the disposal of the censored publication, and the publication considered it necessary to make its data public. i will note right away that this is a report that refers to the first half of 2023, and only during this period , the audit results showed that the ministry unproductively used almost 7.5 billion

hell tetyana nikolayenko, member of the public anti-corruption council under the ministry of defense of ukraine, journalist of the censornet publication, we are in touch, tanya, congratulations, good evening. good evening. i want to clarify right away, after the investigations, which were also from cenzer from the project our money, regarding inflated prices for food deals, at the end of last year, then additional deals were concluded, according to which some prices were reduced, then products, accordingly, that the products were delivered at the prices already indicated in the new additional ones agreements, then there was the law on returns , unarmed purchases in prozoro, the prices of products were reduced, once again, that is, do i understand correctly that even after such a two-time reduction in prices, abuses amounting to billions of hryvnias remain? well, actually speaking, here are these almost 8 billion - these are actually funds saved through

the revision of additional agreements, because there, for example, prices for coffee per kilogram fell from uah 700 to uah 500, and tea prices fell by a third, and that , which the accounting chamber shows now, in fact all these prices that were listed in the catalog, they were at least 30% off. higher than, the consumer market, the additional agreements were actually, at each supplier, changed, well, maybe five or seven items, let me remind you that the catalog, it consists of h 409 items, and these were always the most current ones, that is, i mentioned coffee, coffee is indeed ordered a lot, but it could have been... some kind of jam or a type of fish, which i ordered a little, and in fact, it did not

significantly affect the price, but even these changes in additional agreements that were introduced after the scandal from the publication of yuri nikolov about eggs at 17, they already saved almost a billion hryvnias, and then the withdrawal to prozoro, and the rest there, everything that happened, and they allowed to save in fact almost 8 billion hryvnias, that is, these 7.5 billion, these are not lost , these are those that could potentially be lost, that's right, as a matter of fact, this money could potentially be lost, and fortunately , high-profile investigations prevented such a waste of this money. and if we are talking about uah 7.5 billion for six months and only on the purchase of products, and is there an understanding of the extent of corruption in general?

in fact, the purchase of food, it is one of the largest, such areas of procurement, and they... seem to occupy the third place, in general, in the list of expenditures of the ministry of defense after weapons and social payments, which you talked about in the previous part, as i understand the transmissions and said about what kind of corruption took place there, with what the combatants charged, not at all to those people who were on combat missions, in each of these spheres, corruption is very large, it is sometimes not only at the highest level, but also at the middle level. level, and if we speak in absolute numbers, then it is certain that the biggest corruption is still in the procurement of weapons, and there the losses reach, according to my modest calculations, to the inflated prices of undelivered goods, now they are already approaching a billion dollars, so of course 7 billion hryvnias for food, they look more modest, this

is something that was not spent, but in fact, there was a margin that was laid, it is huge and even 7.5 billion, they do not save the situation, because the audit of the chamber of accounts showed that prices were inflated for products in the catalog by at least 30%. and what the journalists drew attention to, and what later , the limit prices were set, unfortunately they also did not resolve this situation to the end, because i remember this meeting at the ministry of defense, when the transition to prozoru, when we asked representatives of the ministry of defense in general how they determined the prices for the catalog, the answer simply shocked us, they told us, well, we asked the suppliers and

added the inflation index, that is, it was not either, were not the lowest prices, but even in this way it was possible to save 3.5 billion due to the withdrawal to prozoro, but this is not a panacea either, i will explain why, because now there are actually three such large groups of suppliers on this market, they have up to three dozen companies affiliated with themselves, which once every six months with a new sign go to tenders or direct contracts of the ministry of defense, as was the case last year, and while journalists are sorting out who owns the company, the company... simply withdraws millions and billions to their accounts sometimes, and we talked about how members of the anti-corruption council with one of the e, subcontractors, and he explained to us that in fact these companies keep only 1/4 of the network for themselves, and 3/4 of it goes to bribe the

authorities, and therefore i am really looking forward to the investigations of the anti-corruption bureau . regarding the situation that was with the purchase of food and the same with the purchase of weapons, and for some companies, because this would not have happened without the connivance of the authorities, and precisely the audit of the accounting chamber, it shows where such connivance could have taken place, because in the audit of the accounting chamber it is clearly indicated that three the companies that were, with which contracts were signed for the first half of 2023, did not submit their price offers at all, i do not understand at all how the selection of companies took place, i heard that they were brought by one of the heads of regional administrations, and again, and i hope that during the investigation of the anti-corruption authorities, we will find out who did it, huh, tanya,