Scandal With 120-mm Mines For Armed Forces: Anatomy Of Betrayal

The Ministry of Defense has ordered to remove from the frontline all low-quality Ukrainian-made mortar rounds that either did not reach the enemy or did not explode at all. According to ZN.UA, at least 100,000 mines are to be recalled, which would be enough for almost a year of economical consumption. The most popular weapon of this war, the 120-mm mine, will be available to the military only in a month or two, and even then it will be imported, which means it will cost twice as much. This is because Rustem Umerov's subordinates, who were supposed to control the quality of the mines from Oleksandr Kamyshyn's subordinates, simply concealed the manufacturer's problems. Who knows how long this would have lasted, but videos of bad mines were posted on social media by ordinary soldiers, and the problem was highlighted by the well-known journalist Yurii Butusov. This is a textbook example of how corruption and negligence turn a great idea into a betrayal.

A year ago, the Ministry of Strategic Industries under the leadership of Oleksandr Kamyshyn made efforts to ensure that the enterprises of Herman Smetanin's Ukroboronprom received orders from the Ministry of Defense for shells and mines worth tens of billions of hryvnias. This is logical because Ukraine needs to have as many of its own weapons in the war as possible to be less dependent on its allies. We will not name the specific company whose mines became the subject of the scandal to avoid accusations of disclosing sensitive information. So we are talking about “plant X” (of course, the enemy knows this information because the plant has been hit more than once, but the law is the law).

According to the laws and rules, the procedure for supplying Ukrainian weapons through the procurement of the Ministry of Defense should look as follows:

• the General Staff says what weapons it needs;
• the Ministry of Defense informs the Defense Procurement Agency (DPA) what and how much should be contracted;
• the Main Directorate for Technical Evaluation and Quality Control of Arms and Military Equipment of the Ministry of Defense must first check the ability of a particular plant to produce the weapons in question in the required quantities. These are the so-called military prefects, they are physically sitting at the arms factories. This is entirely the responsibility of Rustem Umerov as Minister of Defense, to whom the military representatives are subordinate;
• after the military representative's authorization, the DPA signs a contract and gives an advance payment to start production;
• then the military representative has to constantly check the quality of the products coming off the assembly line. Again, only after the military representative has checked the quality of the goods produced do the buyers sign the invoices and finally pay for the goods;
• if the military representative lets in low-quality goods, the last official safeguard is complaints from military commanders.

If the commanders are unwilling to wash dirty linen in public, which is often the habit, the last unofficial safeguard is a video on social media and complaints from soldiers to journalists. In the situation with the mines, it came down to this last line of self-defense.

And it all started like this. In 2023, President Zelenskyy redirected the tax on military salaries (the so-called military personal income tax) from local budgets to the state budget. Of this, UAH 43 billion was planned to increase weapons production in Ukraine, i.e. for Ukroboronprom enterprises. This money is meant not to increase purchases of weapons, but to increase the capacity of the factories to produce them.

This is the right decision. To win the war, Ukraine needs to be less dependent on arms supplies from unpredictable allies and is interested in supporting its own producers. On the other hand, we are talking about billions in the hands of specific people, which sometimes clouds the mind.

So, in the winter of 2023–2024, the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Strategic Industry held meetings dedicated to the implementation of the great idea. In particular, at the meeting at the Ministry of Defense on February 6 (the minutes are available to the editorial office), the issue of concluding a contract between the DPA and plant X was discussed. Major General Yevhen Zamotaev, Head of the Central Department for Coordination of Foreign Economic Activity of the Ministry of Defense, argued that it was necessary to implement the decision of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief and the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine to immediately conclude contracts for the supply of ammunition primarily with a domestic manufacturer, which was proposed by the Defense Procurement Agency. Yevhen Kurbet, Head of the Department of State Quality Assurance of the Ministry of Defense, who was present at the meeting, did not object to having more contracts with plant X. Therefore, the meeting decided to recommend that the DPA draft contracts with the plant for various types of ammunition. Including for the supply of 300,000 120-mm mortar rounds with the possibility of increasing the volume to 370,000.

Everything seems to be going according to plan, but then the responsible persons hacked their own system of safeguards against low-quality goods, refusing to buy imported mines for $400–500 in favor of domestic mines for the same money, but of worse quality. And the “profit margin” would now go to Kamyshyn's ministry.

Back in January of this year, the military representative of the Ministry of Defense checked the ability of Ukroboronprom's plant X to produce various mines, bombs and artillery shells of different calibers.

Initially, the military representative pointed to the following risks (the documents are available to the editorial board):

• supply of components and raw materials of critical import (gunpowder, explosives);
• training of qualified personnel, production facilities and additional technological equipment;
• continuous operation of personnel and power supply.

The military representative also emphasized that mass production of the M-12 fuze has not yet been mastered. Although the plant already had the technical specifications for it. This is the very part on the very head of the mine that is responsible for the final explosion upon impact.

However, in the end, the military representative signed a positive conclusion: “The enterprise as a whole is able to ensure the performance of work on the manufacture and supply of products in the following volumes [...].” As for 120-mm mines, it was stated that plant X could produce 300,000 pieces per year, taking into account the workload.

Before signing the contract, the Defense Procurement Agency decided to check with the military representatives to make sure that the plant could produce what it had promised. Moreover, its facilities had already been fired by Russian missiles. On February 9, the plant received an even more favorable conclusion from the military representative: given the workload, the plant could produce 670,000 mines a year. So on February 14, the DPA signed a large contract for the supply of 120-mm mines with plant X.

A little later, to make sure everything was going according to plan, the DPA asked the military representatives to reassess the plant's capabilities. In response, it received assurances that since the military representatives had fully inspected the plant in 2023, no additional inspection was needed, and that “the enterprise as a whole is able to fulfill its stated obligations and timely repay the advance payment under state contracts for the supply of products for the needs of the Armed Forces.”

This time, the report of the Defense Ministry's military spokesperson mentioned nothing about the risk related to production facilities and qualified personnel and the lack of mass production of the M-12 fuze.

Reducing the risks in terms of space and personnel is possible: the plant has indeed expanded its production capacity. But there was no mention of fuzes, and this is the problem that led to the disaster.

All these reports were put on the table of the Defense Ministry leadership. Mr. Umerov could not help but notice the incorrect assessment of the plant's capabilities by his subordinates, but he did not pay attention to it. Or he didn't want to report to President Zelenskyy about the unrealistic nature of his powerful ambitions. Or he didn't want to give up billions of dollars in revenue together with Kamyshyn, one of the few irreplaceable managers of our time, according to the Presidential Office.

The first 120-mm mines from plant X went to the front in June. There were no major problems with them at the time. Then there was a break for a couple of months, and in September, the plant continued deliveries. That's when the problems started.

During the shooting (from September 18 to November 10), the following was recorded:

• mines deviated from the aiming point by 100–600 meters in range;
• mines failed to exit the mortar barrel;
• mines did not explode at the target;
• mines fell on the flight path at a distance of 10–150 meters from the mortar;
• when changing the sight, the mine incorrectly changed its range;
• isolated cases of the metal part of the mine not coming out of the tube and of powder burning in the barrel.

However, the military representative did not record these problems in any way. It is not even known how many and which mines he checked before sending them to the front.

Therefore, there was no reaction from the military authorities until journalist Yurii Butusov posted a video of a batch of mines on November 6, which had only one explosion per ten shots.

It was only on November 18 that the Central Department for the Supply of Munitions of the Logistics Forces Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (CDSM LFC AFU) reported “numerous technical malfunctions of mortar rounds already delivered” in various military units.

The problems are the same: failure to exit the barrel, failure to hit the target and deviations from the aiming point by hundreds of meters. In one unit, out of 17 shots, nine mines did not reach the target within 600 meters, seven did not explode (three did not leave the barrel at all), and only one mine hit the target. When the mines were replaced with another type from another manufacturer, the second shot hit the target within a 20-meter scatter ellipse, and the target was destroyed with four shots (two direct hits).

On November 19, the commander of one of the military units finally decided to write an official complaint and call a representative of the factory to document the problem. On November 20, when the documents reached the plant, it informed the General Staff. On the same day, Yurii Butusov posted a video with a mine that did not come out of the barrel.

Finally, the long-awaited response began. The head of the CDSM LFC AFU, Serhii Panov, instructed the commanders of other military units to organize a consumer complaint procedure to replace the VOF-843B mortar rounds. As of now, 100,000 mortar rounds have been recalled, and only after the inspection of all units will the size of the fiasco become clear. A ZN.UA source said that the Armed Forces are currently using about 10,000 mines per month in a very economical mode.

On November 21, the Defense Ministry finally convened a large meeting on the matter with representatives of the Presidential Office under the leadership of interim Minister Ivan Havryliuk (Umerov had some reason not to be the minister that day). This meeting revealed a horrifying picture of the worthlessness of the entire system of control over arms production.

The head of the department of military representatives, Yevhen Kurbet, said something about the existing acceptance procedure, and he was instructed to check more mines from 100% of the batches and generally increase the number of shots during the tests. This means that before that, mines were accepted based on testing a small number of shots and not from all batches, purely to tick the box.

A representative of the Ministry of Strategic Industries promised to replace mortar rounds from all batches supplied to the Armed Forces and noted the need to conduct “a qualitative inspection of products supplied to the Armed Forces.” This means that before that, the control by the Ministry of Defense was at least of poor quality. But the representative of the Department of Military and Technical Policy (DMTP) of the MoD went even further and stated that there was “no quality control system before the supply of products to the Armed Forces.”

Once again, the representative of the Ministry of Defense stated that the Ministry of Defense has no system of quality control before supplying products to the Armed Forces. So much for Rustem Umerov's management.

There were also “technical” complaints at the meeting. The same representative of the DMTP said that all mines should be supplied with standard M-12 fuzes. As it turned out, the mines were equipped with other B-429 fuzes, which were supplied to the manufacturers based on toll processing arrangements with the Logistics Forces Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. These non-standard B-429 fuzes are triggered “only when equipped with a second charge.” But where will the plant get the M-12 fuze if, after the military representative removed this risk from his latest report on the plant's capability, production of M-12 fuzes has not been launched?

This is what happened with the non-explosion of mines on impact. Now let's talk about mines falling short of the target because of problems with the powder charge. Powder in bags or special packaging is “wound” on the tail of the mine, and it is its explosion that pushes the mine out of the barrel at a certain speed, which determines the range and accuracy of the flight.

Ukraine does not produce its own powders and uses only imported ones. It turned out that no one knew from whom plant X bought the gunpowder, and most importantly, there was no method of testing imported gunpowder in Ukraine. Therefore, it was only at this meeting that the Central Research Institute of Armaments and Military Equipment was instructed to develop a program and methods for testing powder charges for these mines, taking into account the effects of the external environment (from -3 to +60C°).

The bottom line is that the mines are being withdrawn from the front, the DPA has to get imported mines from somewhere at any cost (probably for more money because foreign suppliers already know that Ukraine has no alternative), and the great idea of developing Ukraine’s own weapons production has been completely discredited.

Even though neither Mr. Umerov nor Mr. Kamyshyn should have other, more important, tasks at the moment.