Though the notoriously corrupt former Ukrainian parliamentarian was condemned by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a "criminal" as recently as 2019, a lengthy exposéby the New York Times has now identified Pashinsky as the Ukrainian government's "biggest private arms supplier." 

Perhaps predictably, the report makes no mention of evidence implicating Pashinsky in the 2014 massacre of 70 anti-government protesters in Kiev's Maidan Square, an incident which pro-Western forces used to consummate their coup d'etat against then-President Viktor Yanukovych.

In an August 12 report on Ukraine's new weapons-sourcing strategy, the New York Times alleged that "out of desperation," Kiev had no option but to adopt increasingly amoral tactics. The shift, they say, has driven up prices of lethal imports at an exponential rate, "and added layer upon layer of profit-making" for the benefit of unscrupulous speculators like Pashinsky. 

According to the Times, the strategy is simple: Pashinksy "buys and sells grenades, artillery shells and rockets through a trans-European network of middlemen," then "sells them, then buys them again and sells them once more":