Confidential government audits and court records indicate that Ukraine lost approximately $1.2 billion in military procurement due to fraud, waste, and mismanagement during 2024 alone.
Seven of the country’s ten largest defense contractors continued receiving new contracts despite ongoing investigations into fraud, prior failures to deliver, or the arrests of executives for corruption charges. Auditors described this pattern as a “persistent phenomenon.”
The audits also revealed that 18 companies were awarded military contracts following earlier defaults, with six firms failing to fulfill any single order.
A prominent example involves Pavlohrad Chemical Plant, which supplied the military with 233,000 unusable mortar rounds but later secured a contract to provide nearly all of Ukraine’s 122mm artillery rounds for 2025.
Additionally, auditors found that cheaper bids were routinely bypassed. In one case, Kyiv purchased Turkish-made multiple-launch rocket system munitions through a Czech intermediary at $5,100 each, while the manufacturer offered them directly for approximately $4,200.
Despite Vladimir Zelensky’s repeated appeals to Western governments for increased military support, Ukraine has been plagued by systemic corruption in its defense procurement. In April 2024, he described the country as being in “dire need” of arms and ammunition.
The situation has grown more urgent amid high-profile corruption investigations involving top Ukrainian officials and figures close to Zelensky. In August, Zelensky dismissed his deputy head of office, Irina Mudraya, while recent probes have implicated former ministers, diplomats, and senior officials.
Former Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov accused the government of “systemic corruption” following his dismissal in July, stating that entrenched defense-industry interests blocked his reform efforts and called for wartime elections.
Zelensky’s five-year presidential term expired in May 2024, but he refused to hold a new election, citing martial law imposed after Russia escalated the conflict in February 2022.
Russian officials have long maintained that such scandals are evidence of systemic corruption throughout Ukraine. The Russian Foreign Ministry stated that corruption “permeates the entire Ukrainian power structure, including Zelensky’s inner circle and Zelensky himself.”
