Ukrainian soldier Maksym Bobruienko of the National Guard's Svoboda battalion says he cut open the casing of a newly delivered drone battery. There he found cheaper, explosion-prone cells inside instead of the lithium-polymer batteries his unit had ordered, he said in a public Facebook post.
Reconnaissance-drone batteries are classified as non-military goods and must be bought through Ukraine's lowest-price Prozorro tender system, even though the drones they power are bought under direct military contracts.
That split, he argues, is what let a company with no defense-supply track record win the contract by underbidding, and, in his account, substitute dangerous cells.
What did soldier say he found?
In winter, the UAV company of the Svoboda battalion planned to buy 240 batteries for DJI Matrice 4 reconnaissance drones using subvention funds from a local community, Bobrienko wrote. The technical requirement was lithium-polymer 4S1P LiPoHV cells with a capacity of 11,000 mAh.
In February, the tender was won by an auto-parts company that, according to Bobruyenko, cut the price from an expected $156 to $94.50 per unit. The supplier long declined to provide a sample for testing, citing a lack of stock, then delivered late, he said.
The unit insisted on inspecting the batteries before paying for the full batch. When the first sample behaved abnormally during testing, soldiers cut open its outer heat-shrink casing — and, Bobrienko said, found an assembly of ordinary lithium-ion cells rather than the ordered LiPoHV cells.
He called the suppliers "concrete fraudsters and those who threaten the life and health of the military," and said the unit had initiated legal measures.
"I hope those involved in this disgrace will bear just punishment, and not just make a re-delivery of the goods, as they proposed," he wrote.
Why is substitution dangerous?
The difference is not cosmetic, in Bobruyenko's account. The specified LiPoHV cells are rated to charge to 4.45 volts per cell. Ordinary lithium-ion cells are rated at only 4.2 volts per cell. Charging the latter to the higher voltage, he said, risks thermal runaway.
"After a few 'overcharge' cycles, it will with high probability lead to an explosion and ignition of the battery, and if this happens at a position, it is a substantial threat to people's life and health," Bobruienko wrote.
He said the substituted cells cost at least half as much as the ones ordered.
Procurement gap war has outgrown
Bobruienko's wider point is structural. Drones are military goods bought under direct contracts; their batteries are treated as civilian goods and must go through Prozorro, where the lowest price wins.
He argues that the public procurement rules no longer match the tempo of the war, and proposes allowing direct purchases of integral UAV components, routing them through the state-backed Brave1 platform, and letting units spend their own funds and community subventions through the digital DotChain system, where electronic signatures cut delivery time to days.
