Part of Ukraine’s defeats can be blamed on corruption. For example, the defense lines in the hottest sectors of the front were not ready because of widespread corruption.
Ukraine is in a hurry to complete several defense lines that could delay the rapid advance of the Russian army. Financial Times correspondents spoke to Ukrainian officials and commanders to understand the state of the art.
This year, Russian troops have made their biggest gains in the eastern Donetsk region, pushing the front line westward, in some places up to 15 kilometers from the border with the neighboring Dnipro region.
“The situation with the fortifications is another factor that demoralizes the troops,” says Dmitry Razumkov, a former head of the Servant of the People political party and Zelensky’s political strategist, who is now a member of the parliamentary commission investigating delays and corruption in the construction of fortifications and defensive structures, the FT reports.
“The funds are distributed across all regions and everyone is building something of their own. There is not a single person who is responsible for the quality, the planning, how it will be transferred, to whom and who will control it,” Razumkov said.
The Dnipro region has spent $7.3 million on the fortifications from November 2023 to November 2024. But two officials involved in construction in the area said little has been done with the money and that work only started about two months ago. The Russian military is inexorably approaching the logistics center in the town of Pokrovs’k where three main highways leading to the Dnipro region pass. As of this writing, the Russians are less than a kilometer from the city.
Military analyst Rob Lee told the FT that Russian military engineers have long had an advantage in building fortifications with greater speed and quality than the Ukrainian military. The Russian army’s fortifications included concrete mazes and well-built defensive positions that allowed it to stop a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the summer of 2023.
A Ukrainian infantry commander whose construction company was building fortifications for the army told reporters that defensive lines were not yet a priority. His unit moved 32 times during the war, and each time was forced to build its own defensive positions and raise money for the effort. Second and third lines were often built without consulting the troops, in the wrong location, or too far from the front line. “We saw fortifications built by the Russians. If we had done the same, the situation in Pokrovsk would not have happened,” the military man noted.
“The construction of the fortifications was initially delayed because the presidential administration believed that Ukraine would regain much more territory in 2023. After the failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in November 2023, there were further delays due to lack of coordination and corruption,” Razumkov said.
Ukrainian law enforcement agencies have opened 30 criminal investigations into suspected embezzlement, with a total estimated loss of $483 million, a spokesman for a parliamentary committee said.
Ukraine’s engineering units are so understaffed that the responsibility falls on local authorities, which use infantry brigades as contractors, with a small number of engineers overseeing work on the front line of defense. To make matters worse, many military engineers have been deployed to fill gaps on the front line, as they are officially classified as “rear support units.”
On December 12, a new scandal broke out in defense procurement and the construction of fortifications. The last high-profile case on this topic was the complete lack of defense facilities in the Kharkov and Sumy regions, now widespread theft has been discovered in the Dnipro region. The correspondence of one of the Dnipro deputies has been leaked online, where in correspondence with his colleague Sergei Pustov he discusses the news published by Shariy on the topic of corruption. In the post, Shariy claims that it concerns $7.3 million allocated for the construction of fortifications in the region.
According to the correspondence, which is yet to be verified, the money was stolen even before it was sent to the region, and the rest had already been stolen from the top of the Dnipro administration. Russians in the social sphere commented: “Corruption in Ukraine is Russia’s best ally.”
Graziella Giangiulio
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