Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) detained two Kyiv entrepreneurs it suspects of supplying the National Guard with defective combat shirts worth more than 8.6 million hryvnias (about $190,000) and of trying to bribe an officer to accept them, the agency reported on 5 November. According to the SBU, the officer reported the offer to his superiors, and its officers caught the pair as they allegedly handed over the bribe. The agency did not name the company.

Ukraine’s army needs every supply contract to deliver as it fights Russia’s full-scale invasion, and cheating on military procurement costs it twice: in money and in gear that fails soldiers at the front. Investigators have exposed such schemes before, including one in which suspects allegedly stole state funds meant for tank armor. This time, the SBU says, the alleged scheme collapsed early because the officer the suppliers approached refused the money.

Shirts unfit for the front

In August, the company signed a contract to supply 10,000 combat shirts to the National Guard. The shirts did not meet the technical specifications and were unfit for use at the front, the SBU said. According to the agency, the suppliers also delivered an incomplete batch.

The pair then allegedly offered a bribe to an official at the National Guard’s Central Support Base to overlook the defects. He immediately told his commanders, the SBU said. Its military counterintelligence, with help from the National Guard commander, detained the suspects during the handover. They are a woman who previously founded a Kyiv military equipment maker and a man representing the company.

Searches of their workplaces, homes, and cars turned up more than 3.5 million hryvnias (about $77,000) in cash, as well as phones and documents, the agency said. Both are in custody. They have been served notices of suspicion of obstructing the lawful activity of the armed forces and of offering a bribe as a group, and face up to eight years in prison with confiscation of property.

A general in the agency’s own ranks

The arrests come as anti-corruption investigators turn on the SBU itself. On 4 November, Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) detained SBU Major General Serhii Duka, whom it identifies as “Akim” in wiretaps of a group accused of running scam call centers. SBU head Oleksandr Poklad said he fired two senior officials involved in the case.

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Suspected Russian agents caught the same week

The SBU also keeps catching people reportedly working for Russia. On 6 November, it detained a man who, the agency says, blew up the car of the head of Dnipro City Council’s Left Bank administration on Russia’s orders in April 2025. The official died of his injuries in hospital. According to the SBU, the man was recruited through an acquaintance in occupied Luhansk. He allegedly watched the victim from a hidden camera on his balcony and fixed a bomb with a motion sensor under the driver’s seat, then hid in Dnipro for more than a year and a half.

A day earlier, the agency caught an unemployed woman in Sumy who, the agency says, helped Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) target the front-line city. She allegedly looked for border guard bases and checkpoints and sent their photos with map coordinates, moving between four homes in a week to avoid detection. According to the SBU, she found her Russian handler while looking for easy money in Telegram chats. She has been served a notice of suspicion of treason.