Ukraine confronts legacy Russian-linked software in defense and government back offices

Ukraine’s effort to reduce technological dependence on Russian-linked products is colliding with a basic problem of institutional modernization: old accounting systems are difficult to remove. Public job postings in 2026 show that knowledge of 1C and BAS remains relevant in parts of the country’s defense and government administration even as the legal framework for prohibited software becomes more restrictive.

In March, Military Unit A5118 posted an accountant vacancy that explicitly listed 1C, 1C Accounting and BAS among desired skills. The description included 1C/BAS among the accounting programs a candidate should know. Military Unit A4640 likewise sought a head of accounting and reporting with 1C and BAS experience. A vacancy from the Kyiv regional territorial recruitment and social support center also treated familiarity with 1C-type accounting software as an advantage.

Those records provide evidence of continuing demand for legacy competencies. They do not provide a complete map of software currently deployed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. A job posting cannot show whether a product is active, retained for historical records, being phased out or used only in a limited administrative function. It is therefore more accurate to describe the listings as indicators of unfinished migration rather than proof of a single defense-wide technology stack.

A June vacancy from Diia, Ukraine’s flagship digital-government project, illustrates the same distinction. Its finance and economics team sought a specialist with strong 1C, BAS or comparable software skills. The position concerned financial calculations, not the engineering of the Diia mobile application. Separate Diia listings recruit staff for mobile systems, infrastructure, APIs, systems analysis and security. The finance requirement cannot reasonably be used to claim that the citizen-facing app itself runs on 1C/BAS.

That separation between front-end modernization and back-office legacy is common in large institutions. Public services can be rebuilt on modern platforms while accounting, payroll and financial reporting remain tied to older systems containing years of data. Because those systems touch money, contracts and compliance, organizations often replace them more slowly than public-facing applications.

Ukraine’s regulatory response has become much clearer. SSSCIP, the State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection, explicitly addresses 1C and BAS in its guidance on the list of prohibited software. The agency says the listing is linked to the sanctioned status of rights holder 1C LLC. SSSCIP also cautions that inclusion is a sanctions-based legal decision, not in itself a technical security score for each product version.

For covered government environments, the prohibition nevertheless has direct effect. The rules apply to systems processing state information resources, official information, state secrets and critical information infrastructure. SSSCIP says an offline or air-gapped setup is not exempt simply because it lacks internet access. Prohibited components can prevent security authorization or lead to revocation and remediation requirements.

The list is expanding quickly. On July 17, SSSCIP said it had grown from 1,079 to 1,341 entries. The expansion makes technology provenance a wider administrative responsibility. Government bodies cannot limit compliance to a small set of famous brands; they need to identify ownership, dependencies and deployment across software and communications equipment.

The practical obstacle is migration. Enterprise accounting systems store not only files but rules: how salaries are calculated, how inventories are recorded, how taxes are reported and how external services exchange data. Replacing an ERP means migrating historical records, rebuilding integrations, testing financial outputs and retraining staff while keeping the institution operational.

Ukraine is beginning to support that transition economically. On July 28, the IT Ukraine Association and Germany’s federal development agency GIZ announced an additional voucher call aimed at helping micro and small businesses replace 1C/BAS with modern ERP systems. The program recognizes that removing a strategic dependency can impose a significant one-time cost on individual organizations.

The original material also alleged that Fire Point uses 1C/BAS. MAIR independently confirmed that Fire Point is a large Ukrainian defense-technology producer but did not find company-specific evidence of 1C/BAS use in the indexed public vacancies reviewed. That allegation remains unverified and is not presented here as fact.

The verified issue is substantial without that claim. Ukraine has a growing legal mechanism to exclude sanctioned software from sensitive systems while labor-market evidence shows that legacy expertise still exists inside administrative workflows. The policy challenge is now implementation: identify the remaining dependencies, prioritize the most sensitive environments, fund migration and measure when the transition is actually complete.