Substandard mines for the Armed Forces of Ukraine: the Ministry of Strategic Industry identified 24,000 and will return them to the manufacturer.

Experts from the Ministry of Strategic Industries of Ukraine investigated soldiers' complaints regarding substandard mines and found a batch of indeed defective munitions. They identified over 24,000 of them. This was reported by the agency.

It is noted that Ukrainian defense enterprises have supplied millions of artillery and mortar shells to the Defense Forces since the beginning of 2024. Meanwhile, on November 20 of this year, one of the manufacturing plants received a complaint from the Logistics Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine regarding 120-mm mines in accordance with the established procedure.

It is emphasized that the Ministry of Strategic Industries and the Ministry of Defense collaborated to address the shortcomings in their operations, and the mines from the latest batches underwent a re-inspection.

Due to complaints from soldiers about defective mines, the Ministry of Strategic Industries issued an order on November 8 to conduct an inspection, involving officials from the Ministry of Strategic Industries, the Ministry of Defense, the manufacturing plant, the Central Research Institute of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and the Security Service of Ukraine. The commission worked for nearly two weeks and concluded that there were indeed malfunctions in several components of the product.

"As a result, some of the shells were found to be of inadequate quality. Currently, out of batches totaling 54,000 mines that raised concerns about malfunctions, approximately 24,000 mines are subject to return, which accounts for less than 1% of the products manufactured this year," the Ministry of Strategic Industries reported.

The commission prepared a corresponding report, according to which defective mines will be replaced, and the manufacturing plants will enhance quality control of products at all stages of production, starting from the receipt of purchased components.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defense is removing products from the indicated batch, and the manufacturing plant is replacing them with quality samples.

It is worth noting that after a series of complaints and media publications, the Ministry of Defense held a meeting and recalled a batch of 100,000 mines, assigning an inspection of the manufacturing plant. The new production and delivery of shells to the military will take another two to three months.

On November 26, it became known that military personnel complained about mines that disintegrate in their hands, miss their targets, fail to launch from the mortar, and do not explode. Investigator Yuriy Nikolov found out that a batch of 100,000 shells was recalled, and the defenders will have to wait two to three months for the new ones.