A standoff between Ukraine’s defense minister and the official in charge of procuring weapons threatened to escalate on Monday, stirring dissent in the government at a critical time as it seeks to persuade President Trump to maintain American support for the war against Russia.
The dispute erupted three days ago when the minister, Rustem Umerov, said he would not renew the contract of Maryna Bezrukova, the head of the defense procurement agency, citing “unsatisfactory” results. But on Monday, Ms. Bezrukova said she would remain in her position, pointing out that her contract had been renewed by the agency’s supervisory board and that Mr. Umerov had no right to override that decision.
The agency was established to ensure transparency and efficiency in acquiring arms. Activists and some lawmakers, including a prominent one in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s party, denounced Mr. Umerov’s move as an abuse of power undermining anticorruption efforts.
“The minister’s action is a serious offense against our legislation and corporate governance,” Ms. Bezrukova said in an interview over the weekend, calling it an “attack” on the agency’s efforts to cut out questionable intermediaries Ukraine has sometimes relied on to buy weapons during the war.
She reported to her office on Monday, and it was unclear how the standoff would be resolved.
The dispute threatens to weaken an organization that managed over $7 billion in weapons procurement last year and had become a partner for Western allies channeling funds into Ukraine’s growing defense industry — a new initiative Kyiv aims to develop as an alternative for dwindling arms supplies from the West.
Western diplomats in Kyiv were meeting with government and agency officials on Monday to discuss the procurement situation, according to several attendees, who spoke anonymously to discuss private deliberations. Meanwhile, the head of the Ukrainian parliament’s anticorruption committee has called for Mr. Umerov’s resignation.
The Ukrainian defense ministry did not respond to a request for comment. It seems unlikely that Mr. Umerov will resign, as Mr. Zelensky has not offered any criticism so far.
This is not the first time the Ukrainian government has moved to oust officials with responsibility for reforming state institutions, some of whose efforts have caused internal friction. Last year, for instance, Oleksandr Kubrakov was fired as infrastructure minister for reasons never made clear.
But the attempt to dismiss Ms. Bezrukova comes as Ukraine is struggling to send enough weapons to its troops at the front and faces the risk of losing vital arms supplies from its key ally, the United States.
Activists are also concerned it sends the wrong message to Western partners, particularly U.S. Republicans, who have long expressed concerns about corruption in Ukraine. “What minister Umerov is doing is sabotaging our defense capabilities and our ability to keep the trust of our international partners regarding weapons procurement,” said Daria Kaleniuk, the executive director of Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Center.
Mr. Umerov said in a post on Facebook that the agency had failed in the “timely supply of ammunition to our army” and had instead become embroiled in “political games, leaks of contracts, and leaks of information.” He did not provide specific examples.
Tamerlan Vahabov, a former adviser to Ms. Bezrukova who resigned last year, also criticized the agency, saying it had sometimes failed to effectively evaluate contracts. He asserted that the agency leaned too heavily on purchasing from state companies instead of directly sourcing from private suppliers.
Ms. Bezrukova was appointed at the head of the defense procurement agency a year ago, after Mr. Umerov took over as defense minister. He promised to root out corruption in the ministry following a series of revelations about mismanaged contracts for weapons and basic supplies such as food.
The main task of Ms. Bezrukova, who is a former top manager at the national electricity company, was to eliminate intermediaries — often shady arms dealers who were inflating prices. She said the agency had reduced intermediaries’ share of procurements from 81 percent in 2023 to just 12 percent last year. These figures could not be independently verified.
Ms. Bezrukova said her work led to tensions with the ministry. She claimed that defense officials pressured her to sign a contract with a state-owned Ukrainian weapons factory that lacked the workers and gunpowder to produce mortar shells. After being produced and sent to the front, many shells failed to fire, setting off a major scandal in Ukraine.
The defense ministry acknowledged that just over 20,000 shells had been withdrawn. But others believed the figure was much higher.
Mr. Vahabov said that even if she faced pressure, Ms. Bezrukova should have been more vocal in opposing the contract. He also said that she could have conducted more due diligence controls of production of the weapons at the factory. He claimed there were many “normative and administrative issues” with the agency’s structure that hindered the procurement work.
Ms. Bezrukova said she had hoped that the creation of a supervisory board at the agency late last year, a move applauded by Western partners, would help safeguard her independence. “I don’t want to be window dressing or a reputational washing machine,” she said in the interview Saturday.
However, a day before the board’s first meeting, on Dec. 17, the defense ministry amended the agency’s charter, effectively granting the ministry final authority over most of the board’s decisions. “They de facto sterilized the board’s authority,” said Yuriy Dzhygyr, the chairman of the board and a former deputy of Mr. Umerov.
After the supervisory board voted last week to extend Ms. Bezrukova’s contract for one year, Mr. Umerov said he would not renew her contract and announced the dismissal of two state representatives on the board, including Mr. Dzhygyr.
Ms. Kaleniuk, the anticorruption activist, said the charter does not grant the defense ministry a say in extending the agency head’s contract. The charter, reviewed by The New York Times, does, however, allow the defense ministry to dismiss any agency official “in the event of identified existing or potential threats to Ukraine’s national security.”
It remains unclear on what legal grounds Mr. Umerov decided to fire Ms. Bezrukova.
With Western partners, particularly European ones, unable to supply all the weapons Ukraine needs, the agency has helped enact an initiative that uses Western funds to pay for contracts signed with local arms manufacturers. The defense ministry said that more than half a billion dollars’ worth of weapons were produced through this new mechanism last year.
Whether that new mechanism will continue working given the current standoff is unclear.
“This is the worst possible time for Kyiv to turn back the clock on a defense reform success story: when Ukraine needs additional funding for weapons and cynical opponents in Moscow and in certain quarters of Washington are looking for reasons to cast doubt upon the integrity of Ukrainian defense governance,” the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a research institution, said.
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