Ukrainian MP: Ukroboprom sold Ukraine’s only repair plant for engineering and demining equipment
Deputy of the Verkhovna Rada Tatyana Chornovol from the People's Front party stated that the Nizhinsky repair plant for engineering equipment suspended its work six months ago after it had been sold because of 11 million UAH ($432,000 USD) in debt.
"Military engineers complained to me that not any other part of the Ukrainian army is experiencing the same difficulties as they were. Not a single unit in the technology line in Ukraine is being produced; everything at the front is legacy equipment from the Soviet Union. And this inherited equipment constantly needs repairs, but repair is manual because the profile state enterprise Nizhinsky plant for repairing engineering equipment does not work due to the fact that six months ago the plant was sold for nothing,” Chornovol posted in her blog on Censor.net.
She went on to say, “I’ll repeat: six months. Not before the war, not during Yanukovych’s time, but this year. Everything was there, and the workshops, and the equipment. And the debts due to the Ministry of Defense budget and the war in the country were too small—only 11 million UAH. This is not the sufficient amount to cause the sale of the plant.”
"The bankruptcy procedure was started in 2012, and in 2017 was completed by the destruction of the plant as such. After all, this year the most important part of the plant was at the auction. The main workshop was sold with all the equipment for a ridiculous sum of 1.8 million UAH ($70,600). In fact, there is no plant without it after all,” Chornovol continues.
“But the work on the engineering equipment repair is done here in Nizhyn, just behind the plant fence, on the territory of the military engineering unit. Everything is done here when it ought to be done at the plant. It is done without the factory equipment, in fact, in artisanal conditions. In the military unit they ‘do whatever they can.’ 260 units of equipment were repaired last year but it is complete idiocy to do repairs in the garage with a jack if there are a number of specialized workshops," the MP noted.
"And all this is because the military unit belongs to the Ministry of Defense, and the plant belongs to the Ukrainian Defense Industry, UkrOboronProm. Everyone is busy with their own work. The military are repairing and UkrOboronProm is squandering. Anyway, I can’t understand how it was possible to squander the only plant for the engineering equipment repair in Ukraine. How couldn’t they get it out and not restart the enterprise that has a ridiculous debt of 11 million UAH?”
Chornovol further surmises that UkrOboronProm now wants one and a half billion hryvnias from the budget for the new cartridge factory construction. “And this is despite the fact that the number of cartridges in our warehouses is estimated in billions, and in the coming years we are definitely not going to fight either with India or with China," she added.
"The more urgent issue is the demand for engineering equipment repair, which is never enough, which is constantly necessary in the anti-terrorist operation zone, which has long been needed to be restored. How, in such conditions, could UkrOboronProm lose the plant for a ridiculous debt of 11 million UAH in contrast to 1.5 billion, which, at least, tomorrow UkrOboronProm is ready to spend on a cartridge plant?”
“Everything is, to use their own words, mismanagement, corruption and betrayal. By the way, Dmitri Plyatsuk, the ex-MP assistant of the Party of Regions member Volodymyr Sivkovych and the deputy minister of defense Dmytro Salamatin, an odious Minister of Yanukovych times that had let the Armed forces come to ruins, bought it for nothing. It was under the leadership of the Ministry of Defense Salamatin that the bankruptcy procedure of the plant started, in the deputy’s interests. And now, in fact, it has been completed," summed up the MP.