Currently, Ministry of Defense does not meet any of requirements set by army, government, and people of Ukraine - Hudymenko
The head of the Public Anti-Corruption Council at the Ministry of Defense, Yurii Hudymenko, said that the design of the Ministry of Defense does not meet any of the requirements set by the army, the government, and the people of Ukraine as a whole.
According to Censor.NET, he wrote about this in an article for Ukrainska Pravda.
"The Ministry of Defense is so old, large and multilayered that it simply does not make sense to attribute the construction of this chthonic structure to one current minister, Rustem Umerov. If we imagine that the current ministry is solely the product of Minister Umerov's work and imagination, we will have to admit that he has tremendous managerial skills, is able to see the architecture of large processes, distribute roles in the team and create exactly the incentives for his subordinates to work that are necessary for the goal he has set for himself. However, Minister Umerov does not have these qualities in the required quantity," emphasized Hudymenko.
The head of the Anti-Corruption Council noted that the main problems of the ministry are that:
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The Ministry of Defense is enormous. Incredibly bloated. The number of people who, in one way or another, work within the ministry is almost equal to the size of an army corps. Not a battalion, not a regiment, not even a brigade – a corps.
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A significant portion of the ministry’s internal work processes are consciously or unconsciously duplicated across different departments and directorates, and many employees are simply doing unnecessary work.
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The working culture in the ministry is built on irresponsibility. A lack of accountability for one’s actions, an unwillingness to take responsibility, and a constant desire to shift responsibility onto someone else – these are the three pillars that uphold the internal logic of the ministry’s operations.
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The ministry, like a samurai, has no goal – only the path. None of the people I spoke with could clearly articulate what the ministry's purpose actually is. They all mentioned processes – supplying the army, improving logistics, continuing digitalization – but no one could say where the ministry is actually heading. Without a goal, there is no way to reach it. And the ministry does not have it.
- Too many of the ministry's functions are redundant. The Ministry handles army procurement, oversees cultural affairs, manages forestry enterprises, drives innovation, builds housing, maintains land plots and cultural centers, mobilizes people, (supposedly) controls the Armed Forces of Ukraine, issues licenses, provides education, healthcare, awards, propaganda, reservist status, and digital services. These processes are so varied, so fundamentally different and contradictory, that it is simply impossible to manage them properly. And they are, in fact, not managed properly.
- There is no feedback system at all. The internal audit system does not work, there is no self-control of the system. After the last internal audit, which, among other things, recommended a sharp reduction in the number of employees of the Ministry of Defense, this number de facto increased by several hundred more people.
- Corruption schemes in the Ministry have changed, or rather mutated, in recent years. The creation of separate procurement agencies has significantly reduced the classic direct corruption, turning it into lobbying with elements of pressure from "above". At the same time, classical corruption with bribes and kickbacks has not disappeared from the vast peripheral areas of the Ministry of Defense, such as military training, forestry, or real estate.
"So, in short, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine is slow, huge, weak and irresponsible, and it continues to become slower, bigger, weak and irresponsible," Hudymenko summarized.
