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Problems with the supply of individual protective equipment to military personnel have taken on a systemic character. A journalistic investigation conducted over nearly a year documented cases where suppliers failed to comply with the terms of state contracts. The result was helmets that failed quality control, body armour capable of being penetrated by a bullet, and empty warehouses instead of the promised batches of goods.
One of the key entities against which the state raised claims was LLC "AK-Investprom". The company undertook to supply large batches of protective gear but failed to ensure adequate product quality, leading to court proceedings.
According to court documents, an acceptance control act dated 12 August 2024 recorded that 4,950 combat ballistic helmets worth over 39 million hryvnia failed inspection. The state sought to recover nearly 29 million hryvnia in penalty sanctions from the supplier, and the court partially upheld this claim.
A second dispute concerned a state contract dated 11 June 2024 for another batch of protective equipment. Due to improper fulfilment of obligations, the state demanded over 52 million hryvnia from the company. In total, claims against "AK-Investprom" under the two contracts exceeded 81 million hryvnia. The problem lay not only in missed deadlines but also in the low quality of the products.
Another illustrative case was the activity of LLC "MILICON UA". In 2025, the company received a contract worth 217 million hryvnia to supply body armour to the army. Although the goods were delivered on time, they failed acceptance control.
As reported by the Anti-Corruption Centre, the products were found to contain so-called "Chinese plates"; they were penetrable and had diagonal seams. Consequently, the acceptance acts were not signed. The Kyiv Commercial Court ordered the recovery of a fine of 97 million 430 thousand hryvnia from the supplier.
The largest case in the investigation is linked to LLC "Lider-NTZ". In January 2026, the Agency for Defence Procurement (ADP) signed a contract with this company for 40,000 ballistic helmets worth nearly 296 million hryvnia. The first 10,000 units were due to be delivered by the end of June. The company subsequently received two more contracts for modular body armour: for nearly 33 million hryvnia and for 150 million hryvnia. The total value of the three contracts reached nearly half a billion hryvnia.
However, according to registry data, the company has existed under the name "Lider-NTZ" only since late 2025. Prior to that, it operated under a different name, had a different business profile, and different owners. This raised questions about the firm's actual production capabilities for such volumes.
The first contract provided the answer. As of 27 August, instead of 10,000 helmets, the company had delivered only 1,000. Technical inspections revealed discrepancies in weight, dimensions, and internal lining. The batch was returned for rework several times. As noted in the documents, the defects were systemic and recurred each time. On 27 August, the ADP unilaterally terminated the contract and decided to recover a fine equal to 20% of the value of the undelivered goods.
The situation with body armour proved even worse. As of the end of September, the company had not delivered a single set under either of the two contracts, worth 32.8 million and nearly 150 million hryvnia respectively. An inspection of finished products or their components found nothing; the contractor had only just begun manufacturing ballistic elements. According to ADP data, mass production was never launched due to a shortage of key raw materials—two types of polymer materials from a foreign supplier. Since the manufacturing deadlines remained undefined, both contracts were terminated. The company was fined 6.56 million hryvnia under one contract and nearly 30 million hryvnia under the other.
After the termination of the contracts, "Lider-NTZ" began to be publicly linked to businessman Oleg Mitrokhin. The authors of the "NON-STOP" movement called the company a structure from his "orbit" and declared possible links between participants in defence procurement. In other publications by the resource, Mitrokhin and Hlib Yevtushenko are mentioned together through a chain of companies: "MIK", "PAKOPTTORG", "Ekviptorg", "Defence", "Credo-Bereg", and "SuperMIK".
Journalists emphasise that they did not find a direct corporate link between Mitrokhin and "Lider-NTZ" in open registries. Thus, this is currently only a hypothesis that needs to be verified.
Meanwhile, questions regarding protective equipment also exist concerning a company directly linked to Mitrokhin. LLC "MIK" was supposed to supply 23,000 ballistic goggles to the "State Rear Services Operator" for 32.4 million hryvnia, i.e., 1,409 hryvnia per unit. In a criminal case, investigators recorded that on Alibaba, goggles-masks from a Chinese dealer are sold for approximately 214–300 hryvnia with a minimum order of 200 units. According to the investigation, officials of the State Rear Services Operator, in collusion with representatives of "MIK", ensured the victory of controlled firms, while the army received substandard goods at inflated prices. In addition, the Antimonopoly Committee fined "MIK" 30 million hryvnia for collusion in State Rear Services Operator tenders, including for the procurement of covers for modular body armour.
Fines that the state recovers from dishonest suppliers reach tens of millions of hryvnia. However, they do not restore the most important thing—time. A helmet that did not reach a soldier and a body armour that was never manufactured cannot be compensated by a court decision. These stories pose an uncomfortable question to the defence procurement system: how do companies without verified production capacities obtain contracts worth hundreds of millions, and why are their problems only discovered when delivery deadlines have already been missed.
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