In Ukraine, Fraud and Waste Are Rewarded With More Weapons Contracts

In Ukraine, Fraud and Waste Are Rewarded With More Weapons Contracts - The New York Times

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In Ukraine, Fraud and Waste Are Rewarded With More Weapons Contracts

Secret military audits reveal a military procurement system riddled with mismanagement. In 2024 alone, Ukraine lost $1.2 billion to fraud and waste.

Listen · 14:26 min

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!A mortar being fired from a wooden bunker filled with smoke and flying debris. In the foreground, a man wearing a cap covers his ears. A second man is in the background.

*Ukrainian soldiers firing a mortar toward Russian positions on the outskirts of Kupiansk, Ukraine, last year.

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Tyler Hicks/The New York Times*

By

Andrew E. KramerBianca Pallaro and Evelina Riabenko

Andrew E. Kramer and Evelina Riabenko reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. Bianca Pallaro reported from New York.

Sept. 6, 2026, 5:00 a.m. ET

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As Russian soldiers attacked trench lines in eastern Ukraine in 2024, Ukrainian artillery crews opened fire. But the rounds, instead of exploding near the advancing troops, flopped out of launch tubes or landed with quiet thumps, kicking up puffs of dust.

A Ukrainian arms factory, it turned out, had supplied the military with thousands of defective mortar rounds. A burly weapons factory boss, Leonid Shyman, would eventually be arrested and charged in one of the war’s most public examples of defense-industry fraud.

But even as the officials noticed that weapons were arriving faulty, government audits obtained by The New York Times show, Ukraine’s Defense Procurement Agency continued to award Mr. Shyman’s factory new contracts.

The case reflects a persistent phenomenon of the war in Ukraine. Seven of Ukraine’s top 10 military contractors won new business despite open criminal investigations for fraud, failures to deliver on earlier deals or the arrest of chief executives for corruption, according to the government audits obtained by The Times, court records and Ukrainian news accounts.

Mr. Shyman, for example, had been the subject of multiple investigations by anti-corruption agencies, including for embezzlement and fraud, when he won that first mortar contract. The government awarded the $280 million deal while he was out on bail on corruption charges.

Confidential reviews by the State Audit Service and an internal Ministry of Defense auditing department reveal a military procurement system riddled with mismanagement. Warning signs go unheeded, the records show, and there are seldom consequences for overcharging or failing to deliver.

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