Corruption in the defense sector: NABU and SAPO investigate what’s wrong with the “DZVIN” system

20 February 08:49

the state lost 246 million hryvnias due to abuses in the development of the automated system of the Center for Operational Management of the Armed Forces of Ukraine “DZVIN”. This was reported by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports.

As noted, the suspects are:

– former Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Lieutenant General;

– former head of the Armed Forces Communications Troops, Major General;

– former Head of the Automation Development Department of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Colonel;

– director of a private company – the main contractor.

Their actions are qualified under Part 5 of Article 191 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

The NABU emphasized that important examinations in the criminal proceedings were carried out with the active involvement of the Ministry of Defense.

What the investigation found

According to the investigation, in 2016, the Ministry of Defense signed a contract for the development of the system with a commercial company that had no experience in software development. During the four years of development, the terms of reference were changed 13 times, which increased the cost of the work by UAH 300 million. Without justification, the number of prototypes of the system was increased from 4 to 12, which resulted in additional costs for adjusting the documentation – UAH 115 million.

As the NABU and the SAPO found out, the developed system did not meet the terms of reference at all: from incompatibility with NATO protocols to lack of integration with other military systems. Moreover, some of the software is not used at all. Out of the 200 information and calculation tasks planned, only 10 were actually implemented.

How the investigation was conducted

During the investigation, detectives and prosecutors faced attempts to obstruct the investigation. According to the NABU, those involved in the scheme began to conceal key documentation on the financing and development of the project. Also, after the investigation began, they accelerated the work and even modernized the system for free, trying to make it more similar to the original plan. However, due to fundamental errors in the architecture, it is impossible to finalize the ZVIN system.

Despite the obvious shortcomings, the DZVIN system was officially adopted by the Armed Forces of Ukraine at the end of 2022. And in 2024, instead of eliminating the shortcomings or abandoning an ineffective solution, additional funding was planned to be allocated for DZVIN. According to the NABU, this may indicate attempts not only to conceal previous corruption abuses but also to continue them.

What is “Dzvin”?

Dzvin-AS is the basis of the unified automated control system of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. It was supposed to cover the management and control of combat operations at the strategic, operational and partially tactical levels and to generate combat management documents in semi-automatic and automatic modes, create and track maps, obtain comprehensive data on its troops, available intelligence, data on enemy forces, their current and future support, as well as calculate the ratio of forces and means, the optimality of their use in various scenarios. However, experts who studied it noted that Dzvin was more of a document management system and could not help with the situational awareness of troops during active combat operations.

As reported by Forbes, the Dzvin system has been under development at the request of the Ministry of Defense since 2016. A few months before the project was delivered, in the summer of 2020, the Security Service of Ukraine initiated an audit. It showed that from 2016 to 2020, UAH 580 million was spent on development. The final estimate was UAH 624.6 million.

In the fall of the same year, the SBU conducted a comprehensive audit of the project. It found that the software was not up to the task, so further use of Dzvon may not be advisable at all.

In March 2021, an investigation by Serhii Halchynskyi, a military programmer and one of the authors of Delta, who audited the Dzvyn system and concluded that it was unreliable, was published. After that, the Ministry of Defense stated that the system could not be put into operation until the investigation was completed and stopped funding the development.

Following the procedure, the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office transferred the case to the NABU in November 2022.

Василевич Сергій
Editor

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