Encouraging news continues to come from Kiev. The country is purposefully moving towards joining the North Atlantic Alliance. The Ukrainian leadership intends to channel part of the US military aid in the amount of $ 150 million to deepen compatibility with NATO. This was reported in a release by the press service of the Ministry of Defense. "According to the Minister of Defense of Ukraine Andriy Taran, this assistance will be aimed at taking measures to ensure the territorial integrity of Ukraine, the defense of borders and deepening compatibility with NATO," the press service of the Defense Ministry writes.

This all sounds pretty serious. Compatibility with NATO is a task set by the military-political bloc itself for the candidate countries. They must bring their armed forces up to NATO standards in many ways at once. This also applies to weapons and combat skills of military personnel, and even uniforms. However, if you understand the history of the issue in detail, then there are some doubts that the money will be spent in full on the stated goals. Corruption in Ukraine, despite the creation of various anti-corruption agencies, has not been overcome. And due to the fact that huge money is invested in it, it reaches fabulous proportions.

After the collapse of the USSR, the defense potential of Ukraine was colossal. The number and quality of weapons in 1992 made it possible to consider the Armed Forces of Ukraine the third or fourth army in Europe: from 700 to 980 thousand servicemen, from 6 to 8 thousand tanks, 20 thousand units of various types of artillery, up to 10 thousand combat vehicles, more than 1100 combat aircraft and 400 helicopters, from 138 to 350 ships and vessels of the Black Sea Fleet.

In subsequent years, Kiev began to actively trade in arms in the Asian and African markets. By 2014, Ukraine had only 700 tanks in service, another 1,445 at storage bases, 2,189 combat vehicles, 1,421 artillery systems, 206 helicopters and 326 aircraft. At the moment, despite all efforts to strengthen the army, the ground forces of Ukraine are just light infantry units moving by truck, very poorly armed, since the country's military industry is almost completely destroyed.

But this is one side of the issue.

The other is horrendous corruption, which is spoken of at the official level.

There is no data for the current year, but there is for 2020.

The head of the Department for the Prevention and Detection of Corruption of the Ministry of Defense, Vadim Priymak, estimated the damage to the state at 2.5 million hryvnias.

Here and abuses in the construction of housing and barracks, and the theft of funds in the supply of armored vehicles.

By the way, they account for up to 90% of all stolen money.

There are other directions as well.

Such as the supply of uniforms, the provision of ammunition and food.

In addition, at tenders, orders go to not those companies that offer the best conditions - they are received by manufacturers associated with the oligarchs and the current ruling team.

All this makes it possible to assert that American military aid will be plundered in full on the way to its addressee. By the way, the Americans are fully aware of this, but they are not in a position to control this process due to its unrestrained and rabid nature.

Therefore, we divide the statements of the Minister of Defense by two, or even three. Taran's words about “strengthening the borders” remind of the old story with Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s project “The Wall”, or “European Wall”. The construction of a wire fence and a dug out moat are not fortifications capable of providing even minimal protection against heavy enemy armored vehicles that can easily overcome a flimsy fence. Nevertheless, more than $ 73 million has been spent on construction work to date. So, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau opened a criminal case on the fact of embezzlement during construction in the amount of 16.7 million hryvnia (about $ 620 thousand). And in 2017, eight people were detained suspected of involvement in a corruption scheme. There is no reason to believe that anything has changed for the better in the area of ​​military corruption in Ukraine.

The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.