The Defense Procurement Agency of the Ministry of Defense has concluded contracts for the supply of 15,000 ballistic helmets for the Armed Forces of Ukraine with a total value of 141.05 million UAH. The procurement was made on the second attempt after the customer raised the expected unit price by 11.5%.

This was reported on November 12 by "Our Money" based on analysis of contracts in the Prozorro system.

According to journalists, the first three tenders for helmet procurement were announced on October 10. At that time, the Agency was ready to pay up to 8500 UAH per unit, but no supplier submitted an offer.

During the repeated tenders, the expected cost was increased to 9480 UAH per helmet. As a result, on November 2-3, the Agency concluded three contracts with two companies.

LLC "KM Disti" is to supply 10,000 "Tor" helmets at 9390 UAH per unit. Another 5,000 "Kaska-2M" helmets were ordered from LLC "NVP "T:3000" at 9430 UAH. All deliveries under the new contracts must be completed by December 18.

As noted by "Our Money", prices under the new contracts significantly exceed previous procurement indicators. In particular, in April 2026, the Agency purchased "Kaska-2M" helmets at 8000 UAH per piece. Thus, the cost of this model increased by almost 18% in hryvnia terms.

According to journalists' calculations, current helmet prices have become the highest in hryvnia since 2023. In dollar terms, they also exceeded the procurement figures of the Defense Procurement Agency and the State Rear Operator for 2024-2026. At the same time, prices remain below the level of individual Ministry of Defense contracts under former Minister Oleksiy Reznikov.

The new procurement was preceded by the termination of another major contract. In January 2026, the Agency ordered 40,000 helmets from the company "Leader-NTZ" at a lower price - 7396 UAH per unit. However, by the end of August, the supplier had delivered only one thousand helmets. During product inspections, non-compliance with technical requirements was also found.

At the end of August, the Agency terminated this contract and imposed a fine of 57.69 million UAH on the supplier.

At the same time, the increase in the purchase price itself does not indicate a violation of the law. The new tenders took place after no offers were received for the previous procedures at a lower price.