The Kyiv Commercial Court has ordered Milikon UA LLC to pay a fine of UAH 97.4 million for supplying substandard body armour to the military.
The case concerns a contract at the centre of a high-profile scandal. According to the investigation, businessman Tymur Mindich asked then-Defence Minister Rustem Umerov to accept the body armour, and Defence Procurement Agency (DPA) Director Arsen Zhumadilov later confirmed that he had known of Mindich’s connection to the procurement since as early as March 2025.
The case was heard in a closed court session at the request of the Defence Procurement Agency.
The State Logistics Operator (DOT) signed a contract with Milikon UA in February 2025 for the supply of 10,000 modular body armour sets, worth UAH 217.5 million. The company acted as a distributor for the Israeli firm Masada Armour Soy Ltd and was due to deliver the goods by 20 August.
Although the company delivered the goods on time, acceptance inspection found that the body armour did not meet requirements: the vests were fitted with Chinese-made armour plates, were penetrable, and had poor-quality stitching. The goods were consequently rejected.
During its monitoring of the procurement, the State Audit Service also identified violations in the documents intended to confirm that the body armour met the Ministry of Defence’s technical requirements, and demanded that the contract be terminated.
During the tender itself, the company Temp-3000 had challenged Milikon UA’s selection as the winning bidder. It noted that the company had failed to submit the required document from the Central Directorate for the Development of Matériel Support of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in its own name, submitting instead a document issued to a different company — Fortetsya Zakhystu — without demonstrating any confirmed link between the two firms.
Temp-3000 further argued that Milikon UA had not confirmed experience specifically in supplying modular body armour, and called for its tender bid to be rejected. DOT did not uphold the complaint, however, and signed the contract with the company on 27 February 2025.
In August 2025, the agency nonetheless terminated the contract with Milikon UA over the supplier’s failure to fulfil its obligations. The court has now ordered the company to pay UAH 97.4 million in penalties.
What is known about Milikon UA
The company was registered in August 2022. Its first involvement in public procurement was precisely through the DOT tender for body armour. At the time the contract was signed, 49% of the company was owned by Fortetsya Zakhystu LLC, with the remaining 51% held by that company’s own owner, Dmytro Stetsenko. In effect, both companies were controlled by the same individual.
Milikon UA acted as distributor for the Israeli manufacturer Masada Armor Ltd. The company signed its agreement with the manufacturer just three days before the tender was announced.
How Milikon UA replaced Fortetsya Zakhystu
Before Milikon UA LLC appeared, a related company — Fortetsya Zakhystu LLC, registered in 2020 — had featured in DOT’s tenders.
In December 2024, it took part in a DOT tender for almost 75,000 sets of body armour, offering the lowest price in every lot as distributor for the same Masada Armour Soy Ltd.
Rather than rejecting its bid, DOT cancelled the procurement altogether, explaining that the licensing requirement had not been sufficiently clearly worded.
By February 2025, Milikon UA — with the same owners and the same Israeli supplier — was taking part in a new tender.
By that point, the tender conditions had changed. Whereas the earlier documentation had required a licence to manufacture personal protective equipment, distributors of foreign manufacturers were now only required to submit an authorisation document from the manufacturer itself, or a letter explaining why no such document existed.
It was precisely this change that opened the door for a foreign manufacturer’s distributor to take part in the procurement.