Instead of sending drones to the frontline, officials spend millions on museums, bridges and bushes

15.07.2023

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UA.News agency has collected examples of inappropriate use of funds during the war that could have been used for the needs of the Armed Forces. Recently, instead of directing all efforts and funds to support the frontline, state and local authorities have begun spending large sums on projects that can wait until martial law is over.

Coat of arms for 28 million hryvnias

On July 13, Minister of Culture Oleksandr Tkachenko announced the implementation of a project called “Trident of the Motherland”, which will cost UAH 28 million ($760,000). The money will be used to do something that has not been done in all the years of Ukraine’s independence during the active phase of the war: remove the Soviet coat of arms from the shield of the Motherland monument and replace it with the Trident.

Oleksandr Tkachenko, Minister of Culture of Ukraine:

A year ago, 85% of respondents in Diia supported the replacement of the USSR coat of arms with the Ukrainian trident. We have been working on implementing the changes for over a year now and can finally announce the details of this truly historic project. The process is very complex and sophisticated technologically and financially, so the ideas and intentions to do this have remained unrealized so far… Zero funds have been raised from the budget, the money for restoring historical justice has been raised exclusively from big business, which wants to be involved in a project that is great in every sense. The cost of the project is 28 million hryvnias. This is much less than previously estimated.

If you calculate the cost of replacing the coat of arms on the monument with drones for the Armed Forces, you can buy 279 DJI Mavic 3 Fly More Combo drones for $2.8 thousand or 210 DJI Mavic 3 Enterprise Series drones for $3.6 thousand for this sum.

574 million hryvnias for the museum

However, there are projects that involve spending money from the state budget. According to Yevheniia Kravchuk, deputy head of the Sluga narodu faction, the Verkhovna Rada supported the allocation of an additional 573.9 million UAH ($15.6 million) to complete the construction of the National Museum of the Holodomor Genocide.

«I would like to reassure the skeptics who are worried about the state coffers: the initiative does not provide for an overall increase in state budget expenditures for the current year. But its implementation will help to quickly complete the construction work that has already begun, put the facility into operation and honor the memory of millions of victims of the tragedy», — the parliamentarian said.

These funds will allow us to buy five thousand DJI Mavic 3 Fly More Combo drones, and possibly thousands of vehicles that are lacking at the front, as well as provide hundreds of our wounded soldiers with modern prostheses.

$0.5 million for a pedestrian bridge

The city authorities also keep up with expensive projects. Recently, the Kyiv city authorities have once again announced the continuation of the construction of a new pedestrian bridge from Obolonska embankment to Obolonsky Island, which began in 2020.

Kyiv Mayor and Deputy Head of the Kyiv City Military Administration Vitali Klitschko announced the news earlier this year.

Vitali Klitschko, Mayor of Kyiv:

The capital will continue the construction of a pedestrian bridge from Obolonska embankment to Obolonsky Island, which has been underway since 2020 at the expense of patrons. We do not raise money from the city budget. Kyiv received funds to continue construction from the Metropolis of Greater Paris. These are earmarked funds that foreign partners have allocated to us for the construction of this particular facility.

According to representatives of the Kyiv City State Administration, 19,496,400 UAH ($530 thousands) is needed to complete the bridge. If you count the DJI Mavic 3 Fly More Combo for $2.8 thousand, you can buy 190 units for this sum. Or you can buy 1150 digital night vision devices Vector Optics NVG 10 Night Vision for a helmet at a price of UAH 17,000 per piece.

There are also tenders to spend 1 million budget’s hryvnias on the development of the Kyiv Regional Council’s website, or UAH 6 million on the purchase of bushes and trees by the municipal enterprise for the maintenance of green spaces in the Desnianskyi district. Recall, that this is the exact same area where three people, including a child, were killed in a night attack on June 1 because of a closed shelter.

Lviv, for instance, does not lag behind its colleagues in the capital. It became known here that Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi allocated almost 6 million hryvnias for taxi services. Since the beginning of 2023, according to the Prozorro system, structural units of the Lviv City Council have purchased transportation services for business trips within the city, in Ukraine and abroad marked “for business trips” for a total amount of UAH 5,744,194.62.

Basement renovation for UAH 1 million

Meanwhile, the scandalous Department of Education of the Dniprovskyi District State Administration in Kyiv continues to spend large sums of funds at a frantic pace. It has become known that they can afford to spend UAH 1 million on repairing and equipping the “simplest” shelter in each school in the district.

Tenders have already been held for the current repair of the basement for the arrangement:

the simplest shelter in the school No. 188 of the Dniprovskyi district of Kyiv for UAH 999,684
the simplest shelter at the secondary specialized school No. 224 in the Dniprovskyi district of Kyiv for UAH 999,979.