Recently, Russia has carried out two very large attacks on Ukraine, which are the most massive since the beginning of a full-scale invasion.
On December 29, the Russians launched more than 120 missiles of various types and more than 20 drones at infrastructure and residential areas of Ukrainian cities. On January 2, Ukrainian air defense forces destroyed 72 enemy air targets, including 10 Kh-47M2 Kinzhal aeroballistic missiles.
As a result of the attack on December 29, 29 Kiev residents were killed. There were also casualties on January 2.
But if we know about the victims, at least civilians. If the authorities speak out loud about hitting maternity hospitals, high-rise buildings, shopping centers, if we guess about the damage to critical infrastructure by the lack of light, water and heat in houses, then we never know the details about the defeat of military facilities.
This text will also not be about what was hit, but about how reliably our information about military infrastructure is protected.
Let's be honest, the Russians didn't need Google - they entered Ukraine using road maps of World War II. The author saw this clearly while being under occupation for a month.
The Russians have all the information about our military enterprises that operated during the Soviet era. The same goes for critical infrastructure.
We remember how in March 2022, the production facilities of the Luch design bureau in Kyiv were destroyed by a missile and bomb attack.
A month later, on April 15, Ukroboronprom confirmed the report that the Russians attacked the workshops of the Zhulyansky Machine-Building Plant Vizar, located in the Kyiv region. This plant produced components for the R-360 cruise missiles of the Neptune anti-ship complex.
On July 30, the Russian Federation shelled the territory of the Malyshev plant, which specializes in the production and modernization of heavy and light armored vehicles. This was not the first attack.
On August 19, 2022, the Russians attacked the Motor Sich workshops, despite the fact that the owner of the plant continued to supply them with components during the war and for which the SBU was detained.
Of course, the factories had to change their location, although some of them arrived immediately after launch.
Here, first of all, we cannot exclude the human factor and specific traitors.
In recent months, the author has had to hear how one airfield flew into exactly the hangar where the fuel was supposed to be stored. And only by some miracle, two hours earlier, he was taken out of there.
And the spy entered another critical infrastructure enterprise in the form of a cleaner from a cleaning company.
This summer, the capacity of one of the private manufacturers of drones, which should have flown 40 km, was destroyed.
And if on January 2 our air defense forces worked like gods, then on January 29 not everyone was saved. Unfortunately.
Despite enemy attacks and raids by the State Audit Service, the production capacity of the military-industrial complex has tripled this year, and in certain areas - tenfold.
Minister for Strategic Industries Alexander Kamyshin announced this at a briefing on December 27.
According to the ministry, the military-industrial complex of Ukraine now covers 500 enterprises employing 300 thousand workers.
“Despite the fighting, our country’s economy is developing. And the defense industry makes its significant contribution: out of 4.9% of Ukraine’s GDP growth, 1.5% was contributed by the defense industry in 2023,” the ministry said in a statement.
“Production at state-owned enterprises in monetary terms increased by 92% (compared to 2022) and amounts to more than UAH 79 billion,” said German Smetanin, General Director of Ukrainian Defense Industry JSC.
This is more than 637 thousand units of manufactured and repaired products, which is 1,117% of last year.
It should be noted that some of the enterprises did relocation and restoration without government assistance. They were rather helped in this by the “shop”, after which the State Administration of Ukraine ran and shouted that they illegally had 3% of the profit (because they forgot to include it in Resolution 335).
As a result of the SASU audit, 44 proceedings were initiated. But this is not the main thing. And the fact that for some reason the State Antimonopoly Service required from some military-industrial complex manufacturers documents about the actual location of warehouses, production facilities and co-executors of contracts.
But this is not the worst thing - in Ukraine it is quite easy to find data on many enterprises. To do this, you don’t even need to go into open registries. In some cases, Google provides significantly more information.
Now the Ministry of Defense is asking to change the resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers so as not to make public data on contract executors during public procurement. And this is logical for reasons of army safety.
But, while protecting rear procurement, the Cabinet of Ministers and the SBU would have to take even greater care of the defense industry.
But the main surprise is that there is a website where you can see all the contractors and contracts of state military enterprises. At the same time, as it turned out, many did not even know that such trash was possible in the 10th year of the war.
It turns out that folding ammunition in a herringbone pattern and taking a photo against a white background for a postcard is a safety hazard. But open information about the manufacturer is normal.
It's like equipping a fighter and putting a white paper target on him instead of a bulletproof vest.
In order to solve this situation, it is enough to simply limit access to information about such manufacturers.
But it seems that someone is expecting irreversible consequences.
Because in fact, Russian missiles fly very accurately.
