More than 200 military recruitment centers have been searched in Ukraine as part of an investigation into a system of corruption that allows recruits to escape the army, the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office announced on Tuesday.
“The law enforcement agencies have discovered large-scale corruption schemes in almost all regions of the country (…) More than 200 simultaneous searches are currently being carried out,” he told the Public Ministry on Telegram.
The investigators suspect “the participation of officials from the military recruitment offices, in charge of medical and social examinations,” he said.
According to the investigation, in exchange for bribes, “officials helped citizens obtain disability certificates or be declared temporarily unfit for service. This allowed them to postpone or avoid military service,” it added.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had already fired all regional officials responsible for military recruitment in early August, pointing to a system that allowed recruits to be smuggled “across the border”.
Zelensky asked to be put in charge of the military recruitment of soldiers who fought at the front.
At the end of July, the Ukrainian authorities also announced the arrest of a former member of the army, responsible for the mobilization and accused of corruption.
In the eighteenth month of the Russian invasion of the country, the Ukrainian army, which has also been involved in a difficult counteroffensive in the south and east of the country since early June, is keeping its losses secret.
The fight against corruption, an endemic evil in Ukraine, which was already one of the poorest countries in Europe before the Russian invasion, is one of the conditions imposed by the European Union for the maintenance of Kiev’s candidate status.
Source: TSF
