On September 11, 2018, the Director of the League for External Relations Yuliya Vysotskaya participated in the seminar “Defense Procurement on the basis of Western standards 2009/81 / EU on Defense Procurement” organized by the Independent Anti-Corruption Defense Committee (NACO) in association with the Norwegian Center Integrity in the Defense Sector (CIDS). The event was devoted to the need to bring procurement of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine closer to the EU standards.
A significant part of defense procurement needs to be declassified, and at the same time – to increase attention to sensitive information that needs to be protected in a hybrid war with Russia. Such a message was the key to a seminar devoted to bringing the Ministry of Defense procurement to Western standards.
Thus, in particular, People’s Deputy Ivan Vinnik said that a bill is being drafted, due to which it is planned to declassify half of purchases carried out through the State Defense Order, since up to 50% of DOS is the purchase or repair of Soviet models of equipment or ammunition, the characteristics of which do not constitute a large state secrets, and their presence does not give a significant strategic advantage.
Other participants of the workshop focused on the fact that European standards are talking about lowering the secrecy of purchases. Even with the fact that in Ukraine is now a hybrid war, what can be declassified must be declassified – a significant part of procurement must be competitive. In this case, military products manufactured in Ukraine that really constitute state secrets and contain a significant amount of know-how (Bohdan, Villa, Sapsan, Stugna, Korsar, etc.) must be necessarily classified.
Currently, classified purchases through DOS amount to more than 22 billion hryvnia. At the same time, secret purchases without the use of competitive procedures contain significant corruption risks and opportunities for abuse. This is stated in a new study of the Independent Anti-Corruption Committee on Defense “Six Red Banners: The Most Common Corruption Risks in Ukraine’s Defense Procurement”, which was presented during the seminar.
As a result of the event, it is planned to create an interdepartmental working group that will work on adapting Ukrainian defense procurement legislation to European standards.

Reference Material: Presentation of the Defense Procurement Directive 2009/81 / EC

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