“Worse than chaos”: Yuriy Gudymenko on the diagnosis for the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine

Public signals about deep systemic problems in the work of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine are being heard more and more recently, and not only from journalists or activists. Increasingly, criticism comes from within the system itself, in particular, from people who had the opportunity to see the internal processes up close. One of such critical voices was Yuriy Gudymenko, the head of the Public Anti-Corruption Council under the Ministry of Defense, who after several months of deep involvement in the ministry’s processes published their thoughts about his work.

He begins with a principled cautionary position: attempts to transfer responsibility for problems exclusively to either predecessors or current minister Rustem Umerov are incorrect. The Ministry of Defense is too complex, extensive and inertial structure to personify its successes or failures.

“If we imagine that the current ministry is exclusively the fruit of the work and imagination of Minister Umerov, then we will have to admit that he has tremendous managerial qualities, knows how to see the architecture of large processes, allocate roles in the team and create exactly those incentives for the work of subordinates, which are necessary for the goal he set for himself. But it is exactly these qualities that Minister Umerov lacks in the necessary quantity. End of disclaimer.” – believes the head of the council.

However, this, according to him, does not absolve the leadership from responsibility for inaction or deepening the crisis.

Gudymenko directly states:

“The current design does not meet any of the requirements that the army, the government, and the people of Ukraine as a whole put before the ministry.”

Among the key problems, he singles out that the ministry is bloated to hypertrophied proportions: in terms of personnel, it is compared to an army corps. Inside the device, functions are constantly duplicated, which creates “management noise” and paralyzes the effective execution of commands.

According to Gudymenko, the working culture of the ministry is based on total irresponsibility. Employees systematically avoid making decisions, shift responsibilities or inhibit initiatives. Fear of responsibility is the main emotion that drives processes in the institution.

Another fundamental problem is the lack of a goal as such. When Yurii Gudymenko asked the ministry’s employees about their strategic goal, he heard only about “processes”: digitalization, logistics, supply. But without a defined end goal, none of these initiatives can be effective — the system moves in a vacuum.

Separately, he notes that the ministry is engaged in completely incompatible functions: from mobilization to cultural initiatives, from weapons purchases to the management of forest farms. Trying to keep so many areas under one roof turns management into imitation. In practice, “these processes are not properly managed.”

No less revealing, according to the head of the Public Anti-Corruption Council, is the complete absence of a feedback system. Internal audit does not work, and recommendations, for example, to reduce staff, lead to the opposite effect – the number of employees only increases. The promised external audit, which was so proud of during the last reshuffles in the ministry, did not start in reality.

A particularly harsh diagnosis concerns the sphere of procurement. According to Gudymenko, officials are afraid to make decisions that, even for a penny, may turn out to be “not at the lowest price”, even if the more expensive product is of better quality, faster delivery or more effective for the front. And this is explained not by an institutional approach, but by fear for personal safety: “I don’t want to sit down” is the official’s main motivation. This creates an absurdity when tenders with the worst products are won, because formally the price is lower. Quality, the needs of the front are not a priority. This imbalance of incentives leads to the systematic simplification of decisions, the growth of bureaucracy, intrigues, and devaluation of initiatives. The whole system works on the principle of “process for the sake of process”. And the army, which should be the main recipient of aid, becomes somewhere far away for the official – “as if somewhere on another planet.”

According to Gudymenko, only partial changes have taken place in the field of anti-corruption. The creation of purchasing agencies reduced direct bribes in the center, but on the periphery – in military education, real estate or the management of state property – “kickbacks” and abuses did not disappear anywhere. In addition, classic corruption has changed to another form — pressure from above, “lobbyism in the guise of procedure.”

“So, in short, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine is slow, huge, weak and irresponsible, and continues to get slower, bigger, weaker and more irresponsible.” – emphasizes the head of the council.

Gudymenko calls the catastrophic situation with employee incentives a separate point of analysis. People work in the ministry with completely different goals: some want new titles, others want to live until retirement, still others want to really change something, and some are just sitting out the war in the rear. But the system is absolutely unable to manage this variety of motivations. A person with ideas and potential gets surrounded by “cabinet colonels”, loses his enthusiasm and soon becomes part of the old system.

The head of the Public Anti-Corruption Council notes that although thousands of new people joined the army and the Ministry of Defense during the war — logisticians, lawyers, IT specialists, managers — their potential was wasted because the system was unable or unwilling to integrate them. Everything better that the ministry is demonstrating today at international forums was created precisely by these “new cadres”, but without systemic support and without real influence.

“I can say a lot more about the problems with military education, innovations, the lack of “mathematics of war”, which everyone is talking about and which really does not exist anywhere, and other problems that we are trying to solve in one way or another. But then the article, which should formulate a diagnosis, will turn into a monograph in terms of volume and lose its meaning.

Making a diagnosis is important, because it is the only way to prescribe the right treatment. If the Ministry of Defense were a person, the long list of diseases would include obesity, impotence, depression, and many other words of Latin origin. It is treated and the ministry can be saved. But first we as a society have to understand what we are dealing with.

And the fact is that there is no magic pill to cure a patient of all his diseases at the same time. The treatment will be difficult, long and as unpleasant as possible, especially during the war, because after the war society will happily forget about both the ministry and defense, and now it is the focus of attention.

All those who say that it is enough to replace one minister with another, fire (or appoint) a deputy or, for example, paint the ministry building in the colors of the state flag and then everything will be fine – they are all wrong, consciously or unconsciously. We need a functional audit, a comprehensive reform, a long and difficult weeding out of the “deep state of colonels”, mass reduction, professional hiring of new employees, in other words, a completely new architecture, culture and philosophy of the Ministry of Defense. – sums up Yurii Gudymenko.

This material reflects solely the opinions of Yuri Gudymenko. The point of view of the editors of IA “FAKT” may not coincide with them.