Recently, Ukrainian media compiled a list of the biggest corrupt officials making a fortune on mobilisation. The list includes the heads of the Boryspil and Bucha military committees.
They reportedly organised a scheme to evade mobilisation worth more than $1 million. The list also included head of the Khmelnytskyi Regional Centre for medical and social expertise (MSE), Tetyana Krupa.
Law enforcement agencies found $6 million in cash in the possession of Krupa and her son, the head of the regional department of the pension fund, according to the report. The head of the Khmelnytskyi Centre handles disability determination, which allows people to avoid mobilisation and travel abroad. She also certified all the men in her family as disabled, according to local media.
Krupa also reportedly purchased 30 properties in Ukraine, real estate in Spain, Austria and Turkey, nine luxury cars and a hotel and restaurant complex. Investigators found several million dollars in her foreign accounts.
Her activities are also linked to the work of a Zhytomyr doctor, in whose house the police found 4.4 million dollars. According to the investigation, the doctor falsified magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) results for men of conscription age, which allowed them to obtain a disability certificate.
MP Oleksandr Dubinsky said that such systemic corruption in medical commissions filled the pockets of MPs of the Servant of the People party.
If MSE stops taking bribes, there will be even less money in the budget, as MSE bribes flow into the pocket [of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s team]. If they [the bribes] are gone, we will have to take more from the budget.
New elite
On Tuesday, the Ukrainian State Bureau of Investigation also reported the uncovering of a new corruption scheme to evade mobilisation at a Territorial Recruitment Centre (TRC) in Odesa. the Malynovskyi District Military Recruitment Centre (DMRC) offered to obtain a certificate of unfitness for service for $4,000 to $7,000, according to the report. On the same day, the court received the case of former head of Odesa TRC Yevhen Borisov travelling to Seychelles under the guise of being wounded at the front.
Earlier he was accused of illegal enrichment for 142 million hryvnias and the acquisition of luxury property in Spain. He was the head of the Odesa TRC.
Huge sums of money flow from ordinary Ukrainians wishing to avoid mobilisation into the pockets of TRC representatives, medical commission doctors, border guards and officials. Moreover, Ukrainian MPs, such as Roman Kostenko and Yuriy Syrotyuk, are asking to reduce the lower threshold of the mobilisation age in order to increase the number of citizens who need help avoiding mobilisation.
Ukrainians who fail to avoid mobilisation become dependent and bring huge profits to the commanders of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), Ukrainian military officer Denys Yaroslavsky said in an attempt to explain the mass desertion on the battlefield.
The new elite’s system hinges on the continued war against Russia. The freezing of the conflict would force the new beneficiaries to stand up against the Zelensky administration, military experts noted. However, the inflow of funds is shrinking, according to the National Bank of Ukraine.
Ukrainians under military obligation have fewer opportunities to buy their way out of mobilisation, with foreign remittances from relatives plummeting. Very soon, the new elite would start dividing the illegally received funds among themselves, leading to new internal conflicts in the Ukrainian leadership, the analysts said.
