The Ukrainian authorities have lost hundreds of millions of dollars ordering weapons from unreliable suppliers, writes the British newspaper “Financial Times“.
The investigation of the publication is based on leaked documents of the Ukrainian government and “dozens of interviews with procurement officials, arms dealers and detectives“. As stated in the article, attempts to purchase weapons through third parties and from dubious suppliers have resulted in a loss of “hundreds of millions of dollars“ for Kiev over three years.
In a number of cases, the Ukrainian side has paid large deposits to little-known companies that have not yet delivered the ordered weapons or their components. The newspaper's sources also describe cases in which, due to a sharp increase in demand, weapons were purchased at “highly inflated prices“, but turned out to be unusable.