It seems as if some kind of attitude has emerged to drown Umerov, and now the Internet is full of devastating articles about him by various activists. Political scientist Yaroslav Bozhko claims in his article that the accusations are based on a superficial understanding of the work of state structures and are not confirmed by facts of corruption, and also criticizes anti-corruption activists for their incompetence in the issue of state defense management.
was published in the columns of "Ukrainian Pravda" by the head of the Central Criminal Investigation Committee, Darya Kaleniuk, as well as Maria Berlinska and Alena Getmanchuk. It is directed against Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, whom the same anti-corruption community "handedly" appointed to the position of minister last year and "assured that things would get better."
The first and main complaint is “chaos in the Ministry of Defense, which Umerov has not eliminated.” I tried to sift through all the material to find indicators of this phenomenon called “chaos,” and saw some shocking things.
However, I saw the usual misunderstanding of the realities of the work of state agencies and the defense sector by all three authors (none of whom have ever worked in any state agency or civil service). And of course, the pulling of the owl on the globe.
First, I still haven't found any corruption or substantive accusations against Umerov regarding corruption schemes involving the Ministry of Defense. And this is their main work profile, and the question of why they took to commenting on the work of the Ministry of Defense is open.
If there are schemes, write about them and show the figures, submit applications to law enforcement agencies, but only "for", but this already looks like typical lobbying. As many as five deputies and other officials of the Ministry of Defense coordinate work with international partners.
The authors call it chaos, although it is logical that cooperation with foreigners is a sectoral thing: someone cooperates with them on military-technical issues, someone on procurement, someone on material support, someone on personnel training. But "the task was to show chaos"!
The same material also contains the statement that “Western partners constantly ask to explain who is responsible for what in the Ministry of Defense” — also completely empty. After all, the frequency of constant communication between the West and the Ministry of Defense — from visits, Forums, constant mutual visits, phone calls, and even banquets — is very high.
Profiled Western employees of NATO, defense ministries, and defense companies are familiar with the Ministry of Defense many times over, and much more so than with the Central Military Commission and Maria Berlinska. This is simply the logic of the departments' work, and it is not surprising that another ministry abroad is always a more interesting target for them to communicate with than activists.
Despite the statement at the beginning that as many as 5 officials are working on international communications with partners, at the same time they write below that in fact no one is coordinating work with international partners. Since one official has not yet been appointed and is vacant.
However, is this evidence of chaos? Personnel material for high-level international cooperation positions is an extremely rare phenomenon, and the vacancy of a position (while being coordinated by 5 other people) is by no means evidence of chaos.
The entire material exudes a vibe typical of the CPC pool — “we knocked out the F-16 aircraft for Ukraine, not the Ministry of Defense,” etc. The accusation about slowing down the launch of the Defense Procurement Agency supervisory board, with a reference to a document on NATO recommendations, looks funny.
However, in the same document, in the profile box, it is clearly stated that the regulatory norms for this should be developed not by the Ministry of Defense, but by the Cabinet of Ministers; well, it happens. The authors reproach Umerov for allegedly learning from public activists that the decision on the allocated funds to Ukraine in the amount of $6.2 billion expires in a month.
At the same time, the fact that they are not being provided is not due to Umerov's actions or Ukraine in general, but requires specific decisions from the US and specifically Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. This is stated in the same post, which is referenced in the article itself — however, for some reason, the US inaction becomes a reason to criticize the MoD.
My verdict is simple: the anti-corruption activists were “promised something” when Umerov was appointed to the position, or later, and then it became clear that “the deal would not happen.” And therefore they had to “withdraw their support for Umerov” and point out that they were “wrong with him.”.
As in the Soviet Union: “ Comrade Beria was hanged from the gallows .” But here are the people who can judge the activities of the Ministry (in general) and the Minister (in particular) of Defense of Ukraine:
- public administration specialists — no;
- Western partners — no;
- defense procurement specialists — no, because the Central Military Commission never made any large-scale weapons purchases, nor did Maria Berlinska).
Defense is handled by the state, not by public organizations that have tied themselves up to be a kind of Watchdogs, while not having a specific profile in the field of defense state management. A fool is rich in thought, huh…
My separate "hello" for the thesis that various advisors and specialists play a major role in the Ministry of Defense, who do not submit declarations and "it is unknown whether they have undergone a special inspection." These are the realities of public administration.
Since positions in the state structure are usually full-time (civil service) and advisory (patronage), where they are hired to work on different terms. Of course, it would be better for everyone to pass a special military counterintelligence check, but the absence of this direct requirement in the admission standards for the patronage service (in all departments, not just the Ministry of Defense) does not mean at all that they do not pass it there
Besides everything else, the thesis about declarations sounds simply ridiculous. Declaring is cool, but what to do if your department needs a specialist who saw your declaration in the coffin and curses the civil service for its framework with the register of PEPs and other restrictions (introduced not without recommendations and pressure from the Central Election Commission).
To attract smart people with less stringent requirements, the option of being an advisor was created (since the state cannot and does not know how to compete with salaries in high positions). But Kaleniuk and Co. are ignoring this.
The last and most amusing thing: the authors accuse Umerov of cooperating with Turkey, which causes them concern, because “Turkey recently joined the BRICS.” Friends, the conflict between Turkey and the United States has been going on for almost 10 years, as has the fact that the United States has been supporting the Kurds and the democratic opposition to Recep Tayyip Erdogan with weapons.
Turkey's support for Ukraine with weapons has been long-standing and in no way contradicted the support for weapons from the United States — the world is still colorful, not divided in two on every issue. And everyone knew about Turkey's closeness to the Crimean Tatar Umerov for a long time, but still a year ago they supported his candidacy for ministers and stood up for him.
The Turkish-American disputes were already in full swing back then, and for some reason you didn't blame Umerov for them, but now it has suddenly become a striking fact on which you have begun to base your criticism. Anti-corruption activists "somewhere" did not agree with Umerov, and now they are starting to "swing" him.
And what they didn't agree on was clearly not about spiritual values, but about something quite lobbyist and mundane. Such is the nature of this environment: frogs love snakes and vice versa.
