There is another scandal in the Ministry of Defense regarding the nutrition of Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers. It turned out that one of the ministry’s laboratories actually allowed vile suppliers to send low-quality stew to the front.
Unfortunately, this is not the only case, and it forces us to once again talk about the main source of this story - the lack of army nutrition reform, the continuation of purchases according to the catalog, and also the fact that the Ministry of Defense did nothing at all to fulfill the requirements of the anti-corruption strategy to implement the registry suppliers
As a result, “trusted” suppliers who have retained their positions in the “market” continue to dump prices among themselves in order to win tenders with the lowest additional price, and this lowest price is ensured due primarily to the low quality of meat.
The situation has reached the point where factories that have their own meat production facilities simply refuse to put their markings on it, because then they pump it with so much water that no one wants to be responsible for it.
“The average price of chicken in the catalog is 120 UAH. You won’t find such chicken anywhere on the market now. As a result, our military receives water in chicken skins,” says Censor.NET.
In September, the military sent the author a photo of pork and chicken they were receiving near Pokrovsk, one of the most difficult areas of the front.
Our defenders were given meat that simply fell apart in their hands after defrosting and came off as foam.
This area is provided by the Trade Granit Invest company, which is said to be close to businessmen Adamovsky and Yakubovsky.
The company received this tender in July, after the Granpri company failed to cope with deliveries in this direction.
A week after the publication of the photo of meat, a presentation of nutrition reform from DOT took place, at which the author heard a dialogue between the head of Trade Granite, Yulia Pavlichenko, and the representative of the State Logistics Operator, Galina Litysh, regarding the change of contractor who transports meat.
After this, the nutrition of the unit that showed meat became significantly better. But this did not correct the whole picture.
And similar quality problems in the same direction became the subject of investigation by Lviv colleagues.
At the beginning of July, NGL.media was contacted by Dmitry Vlasenko, a command officer of one of the battalions holding the defense in the Pokrovsky direction. He spoke about the poor quality of food that not only his battalion receives. And he handed over several cans of stew. At first, the journalists tried to eat it, but decided that it was better not to eat it.
Therefore, the editors further submitted the stew for examination and found that the laboratory of military unit A3466 of the Department of Food Safety and Veterinary Medicine of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine approved the supply to the Ukrainian Armed Forces of almost 11 thousand cans of stewed pork, which is unfit for consumption.
The results of the examination showed that the canned food samples do not comply with DSTU in terms of organoleptic and physicochemical indicators. This means that such canned food cannot be sold or consumed.
Experts have found that more than 60% of the contents of the jar is water—more precisely, liquid broth.”
Interestingly, most of the stews could not be bought in the markets. And Trade Granite buys it from the Kyiv company Menterika LLC, which is essentially just a sign, not a manufacturer. Menterika LLC was founded in 2021. About 2 thousand more companies have the phone number of Menterika LLC, which is indicated during registration. The owner and director of the company is Vladimir Martynenko.
Menterika LLC sells Trade Granite products through another intermediary company. And yet everyone claims that they have the proper documents. But …
“The quality control of canned food supplied to the Armed Forces of Ukraine is carried out at the production stage. That is, until direct delivery to military units. The Office of Food Safety and Veterinary Medicine selects control samples from the batch, sends them for laboratory analysis and, in case of a positive conclusion about suitability for consumption, issues a quality certificate for the supply of the corresponding batch. During August (this is the period mentioned in the journalistic material), DOT did not receive a single official complaint from military units regarding the unsatisfactory quality of canned goods,” the DOT commentary says.
In order to strengthen control over product quality, the State Logistics Operator, at the request of the Ministry of Defense, plans to digitalize the process of confirming the availability of quality certificates. Namely, to introduce a system solution in the IT system for managing the provision of the Armed Forces of Ukraine - DOT-Chain. It is planned that the supplier will indicate the quality certificate number in the IT system with the invoice, which will allow tracking whether this batch actually meets the quality requirements or not. But this is about the future for now. And the fact that DOT does not receive complaints does not mean that there are none.
In August, ex-deputy and now military officer Tatyana Chernovol wrote a column that there are three worst smells in war - carrion, mice and meat supplied by the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Unfortunately, this complaint is not the only one. This year there are more complaints about the quality of products than last year.
And, unfortunately, members of the public anti-corruption council warned about this a year ago. Because when product purchases were returned to Prozorro, and this led to savings of almost 4 billion, the subcontractors told us: “They are just playing on quality. No one will lose their margin, especially since the supplier receives only ¼ of the margin, the rest goes up”...
One of the first signs of such a game was canned pork, which units received in the Kiev region. The jar contained bones and tendons, not meat. But when members of the GAR MO received the initial data from the jar, it turned out that the batch had passed the test and the quality was good.
Only later did the GAR MO learn about a method where, after passing an examination, more products are released under the same numbers, of much worse quality.
More than a year has passed since then. The State Logistics Operator was launched, and the number of inspections was increased. But just yesterday the author spoke with colleagues from the State AR of the Ministry of Defense and the military about optimizing the work of the Ministry of Defense hotlines for receiving anonymous complaints about food, because there are many of them.
And, unfortunately, checks will not fix this. That is, they will fix it, perhaps locally, but not globally.
Because, as I noted at the beginning, there is a global problem with the catalogue. The Ministry of Defense does not buy stewed meat or meat separately. No, it buys ephemeral extra income - three meals a day for a military man. Now it costs the state about 110 UAH. In fact, for such a price it is impossible to eat normally.
“We eat sausages, which are scary to give to dogs,” says one of the military men in a conversation.
In fact, the current military food catalog with 365 positions serves as a screen. Behind which lies a dubious game with prices.
If you take, for example, the catalog of the Atomservice company, you can see that the price for fresh seasonal broccoli has been lowered from 80 to 48 UAH. Fresh cauliflower has been reduced in price from 90 UAH to 54. Fresh sorrel has been reduced from 180 UAH to 120. Chilled trout has been reduced in price from 450 to 360 UAH. And, most likely, the supplier will never transport this product.
But first-grade eggs at a maximum price of DOT 3.1 will be supplied for 3 hryvnia. And premium eggs have been reduced in price by as much as 22 kopecks. Long vermicelli (hard varieties) with a marginal price of 31.5 will be supplied at a price of 30.6. Less hryvnia difference. Horns and pasta also fell in price by only one hryvnia from 22 to 21 hryvnia.
If the supplier has contacts with military units, and the old suppliers certainly do, then he will not have problems ordering 300 grams of asparagus. And he will supply the product that he has, and from which he will have a margin.
But a new supplier who crossed someone’s path will most likely fly out for the same reason. He has no contact with the food chief.
At the first auction for food, DOT tried to change the qualification criteria for producers, counting on a higher quality supplier than the usual “Horns and Rakotis” that serve the Moscow Region. But instead the old suppliers rebelled. First, they gave the Moscow Region an ultimatum to return the old qualification criteria, and then they completely withdrew their proposals for bidding on Prozorro.
DOT was forced to turn to the contractors of the old suppliers to sign contracts with it. Some agreed. Among them, by the way, were two canned food manufacturers. This is the “Busky Cannery” (as a continuation of the line of the Grinkevich family) with a large list of complaints about the quality of canned food in previous years, and the LLC “Cherkasy Meat Processing Plant”.
The latter belongs to the orbit of the former chairman of the Cherkasy Regional State Administration Yuriy Tkachenko. Among the assets of the Tkachenko group are the Molly store chain and the Fermersky market in Cherkasy, the Zolotonosha Bacon and Zolotonosha Turkey Factory companies.
In the spring, Cherkasy Meat Processing Plant was able to hold out on supplies for only a few weeks. Despite the fact that during the audit, DOT found that the company had full warehouses and only more than 100 workers in one warehouse, the company had constant problems with logistics due to changes in orders and the fact that goods were not accepted from it.
In the spring, interlocutors at DOT said that the company even recorded a conversation with one of the food chiefs, who directly said that he would not accept the goods.
That was not all - ChMK, like most suppliers, in those days faced the problem that the subcontractors they found refused to supply because the old suppliers stupidly threatened them that they would not return the money if they went to the new ones. Considering that suppliers of certain groups of goods are closely related to each other, for example, fruits, a supply shortage for new companies became simply inevitable.
The author knows this story from the subcontractors themselves, who complained that they were not getting their money back. This problem has not been solved - many manufacturers have full warehouses, but do not want to work with MO. As well as being hostage to price dumping.
What actually happened with the unpaid money was then well explained by the story of the trunk with 4.7 million euros.
But this is not the most interesting thing in the spring epic. ChMK then replaced the “Provisional Reserve Contract” under direct agreements. He was next in line. But when the ChMK agreements were still in force, some military units received strange letters with similar content.
After this, one of the representatives of large retail and a consortium of manufacturers began supplying the bunker.
But after some time they also stopped supplying food to the troops. Some old suppliers were tortured by courts for warehouses, some decided to exit with minimal losses and better prepare for the next auction. Some doubt whether it's worth it and just want to get their money through the courts.
At the beginning of September, DOT presented a new version of the food procurement reform. Some regions will work under the new pilot system. First, signal auctions will be held among producers of 6 groups of goods (in particular, dairy and meat groups), and then the operator selected by DOT will conclude contracts with them.
Although the new system is much closer to ending the catalogue's ability to skew prices, potential bidders have many questions. Can a manufacturer of one type of product become an operator? It seems not. That is, either transport or sell your meat. Which is, in principle, logical. Although he promises less money.
The main thing here is that the criteria for manufacturers are correct.
But that's not all. Some suppliers are not sure that they will be able to enter the new cycle. And here the biggest problem is that both those who partially supplied and could not resist, and those who became subcontractors, still do not receive money.
Now most of the old postmen work on the market - “Atomservis”, “Mit Prom” as a new façade of the Glinyanoy group, “Kontrakt Proderezerv”, “Yug Food Torg”, “Bugsky Cannery” associated with the Grinkevich family. The new ones also turn out to be connected with them. At least the transition of managers.
Whether the new system will be able to change this landscape is unknown. At a minimum, most deliveries will still take place according to a proven system, with a catalogue.
Therefore, it is likely that someone will again eat meat from water and stew from cartilage.
A unified register of suppliers could help here. Its creation is provided for by the anti-corruption strategy and NATO recommendations. But the ministry and the relevant policy department have done nothing at all in this direction.
Just as nothing has been done to create qualification criteria for signing direct contracts, as well as the application or abolition of economic sanctions. If this does not happen, then even in the case of criminal proceedings for low-quality products, some suppliers will simply change their signs. Brought to perfection by the Glinyanaya group.
