The Financial Times did not write that Ukraine lost a billion dollars on this deal. The newspaper only reported on the arms supply contract that Ukraine signed with an Arizona company in the first months of the full-scale invasion. The company was never able to fulfill it due to the lack of experience in such large-scale deliveries. The irresponsible supplier received 17 million euros in advance, but Ukraine successfully sued for this money after the contract was canceled.
Kremlin media and social media users are spreading information that an American arms company allegedly managed to cheat Ukraine out of one billion dollars. Propagandists wrote that this was allegedly concluded in an article by the British newspaper Financial Times.
«A small arms store cheated Ukraine out of a billion dollars, according to the media. Ukrainian state-owned company Progress signed a deal with Arizona-based OTL Firearms for $1 billion and did not receive a single munition, the Financial Times reported», RIA Novosti writes.
After the spread of such information, StopFake decided to verify whether the Financial Times really claimed that Ukraine lost a billion dollars on this deal.
Before propaganda spread the news, the Financial Times did indeed publish an article titled How a tiny US gun shop won — and botched — a $1bn Ukraine contract. It tells about a «modest weapons store» from Arizona that had no experience in export activities and fulfilling orders on a state scale. Despite this, the journalists write, the company received a large order from Ukraine in 2022 for the supply of weapons, which it was never able to fulfill due to inexperience.
The information that Ukraine lost a billion dollars is yet another fabrication of Russian propagandists. The Financial Times journalists note that Ukraine transferred only 17 million euros to the American company as an advance. Not receiving the ammunition within the established period, Ukraine appealed to the court, which ordered the arms company to return this advance, as well as interest and legal costs. As a result, it now has to pay the plaintiff more than 20 million euros. Claims that Ukraine transferred the entire amount under the contract — a billion dollars — are simply missing from the story.
«This court decision (on paying Ukraine more than 20 million euros – ed.) was the first legal consequence of one of the strangest attempts to purchase weapons during the Ukrainian war, providing a rare opportunity to look into the chaotic world of logistics on the battlefield, where urgent demand meets unstable supply», the newspaper writes.
In telling this story, Financial Times journalists describe a certain chaos that reigned in the area of weapon procurement in 2022 at the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Propaganda simply took the information out of context and made up the news about the «billion-dollar fraud», attributing it to a credible media outlet.
StopFake has previously refuted a similar fake, which claimed that Financial Times investigative journalists had established that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky «stole and transferred to his personal account $770 million in budget funds» intended for the Ukrainian army.
