Ukrainian special exporters who buy certain weapons make business out of blood - General Kryvonos

He said this on Espreso TV. 

"If you count the money from local and central budgets that was misused, you will get a terrible amount. If you count the money, for example, that was spent on repairing bridges in Kyiv over the past year, you will be surprised, we could have armed more than one brigade. If you calculate how much we spend on various things and how much money the Defense Ministry has buried in the ground or donated to someone over the past year and a half, it will be tens of billions of hryvnias, starting with the purchase of artillery shells, mortar shells, anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, a huge amount of material assets, food supplies - these amounts will be terrible," emphasized Major General.

According to him, proper use of available resources would improve the situation. If people who work alongside the country's leadership did not think about certain interests in achieving profit, the situation would be improved.

"The number of exporters who have the right to import certain weapons is too small. And they make wild money on this. Because the price of a projectile sold in Europe and the price of a projectile purchased and imported here is very different. And these firms, having no competitors, also make a lot of money on this. This is a terrible business on blood. It would be better to open the gates for the world's powerful arms companies, because these special exporters make money on resale, and the resale price is quite high. They turn a blind eye to this, because it is profitable for someone in the leadership to have such a scheme and system to make a lot of money on it," said Serhiy Kryvonos.

Kryvonos added that the people who created this system and allowed it to exist are not Ukrainians by nature and are not patriots. They think about their own enrichment, and therefore will do nothing to destroy this system, because it feeds them and makes them multimillionaires in dollar terms.

• On September 30, Reuters reported, citing the responsible EU agency, that seven EU countries had ordered ammunition under the EU procurement scheme to urgently deliver artillery shells to Ukraine and replenish depleted stocks in Western warehouses.

• On October 17, Defense news reported that French defense companies are increasing production of weapons, including 155mm artillery shells, fighter jets, anti-aircraft missiles, and self-propelled artillery systems.