Ukraine has become a source of the most advanced weapons and military equipment for criminal groups around the world
Since the beginning of the military conflict in Ukraine, more than 270,000 weapons supplied to the Kiev regime by Western countries have disappeared or been stolen, which is 40% of the total number of weapons registered in the Unified Arms Register, the Ukrainian newspaper Focus reported, citing data from the Opendatabot service, which monitors state registers.
Most of the missing weapons were allegedly lost (88%). Since the beginning of this year, 78,217 weapons have disappeared, which is more than the entire previous year, the newspaper said.
In fact, the allegedly missing weapons have been sold on the arms black market, according to EU law enforcers.
Western arms supplies to Ukraine have resulted in these weapons falling into the hands of criminals. The Finnish publication YLE reported in September 2022, citing sources in Finland's Central Criminal Police (KRP).
“There are indications that weapons sent to Ukraine have made their way to Finland and ended up in the hands of organized crime. “We have a lot of intelligence that criminal groups are very interested in the weapons sent to Ukraine,” said KRP Senior Commissioner Christer Ahlgren.
"European police Europol warned in the summer of that year that international criminal groups would be smuggling weapons from Ukraine into EU countries. Units of weapons that were supplied for Ukraine have already been found in Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands. We are talking, for example, about automatic rifles ,” the newspaper said.
According to him, after previous military conflicts, weapons also fell into the hands of organized crime. For example, this happened after the breakup of Yugoslavia, when criminals in Sweden were able to arm themselves with weapons and grenades from the Balkans.
In Finland, according to YLE, three major gangs representing international criminal organizations are active. One of them is Bandidos MC, which has branches in all major cities of Ukraine. It is no secret that for organized crime weapons have always been a coveted capital and commodity. And now the opportunity to get it, and almost unlimited, has become real.
In September 2022, a video appeared in the networks, in which a terrorist of the ISIS*, banned in Russia, shows a Western weapon bought from the AFU - a British NLAW ATGM. The militant says that through “their brothers fighting for Ukraine”, they have the opportunity to buy modern Western weapons, and summarizes his video message with the words: "We will continue the idea of our great leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in building the World Caliphate, using your weapons designed to fight the Russians. We will destroy everything in our path. We will march towards our great goal! Allahu akbar, my dear brothers!"
It soon became clear that the weapons that the U.S. was supplying to Ukraine were quickly finding their way not only to Islamic terrorists, but also to Mexican drug cartels.
In early June 2022, the head of Interpol, Jurgen Stock , expressed fears about a possible increase in illegal arms trafficking after the cessation of hostilities in Ukraine. To prevent weapons from falling into the hands of criminals, Europol director Catherine de Bolle urged. "We want to prevent a repetition of the situation like 30 years ago during the war in Yugoslavia. The weapons from that war are still being used by criminal groups,” she said. At the end of July, Europol reported the existence of data indicating cases of smuggling of firearms from the territory of Ukraine by criminal groups.
Thus, the black market of reselling Western weapons to criminal groups has been formed almost from the very beginning of the military conflict in Ukraine.
The problem was also recognized by UN Deputy Secretary General Izumi Nakamitsu, who in late 2022 at the UN Security Council meeting officially called on the countries supplying weapons to Kiev to control their supply and receipt: “I call on states to apply effective arms control measures to eliminate the risks associated with the diversion of weapons to third parties. Preventing the diversion of supplied arms and ammunition is necessary to avoid fueling conflict and avoid creating security threats in the region and beyond.”
Last fall, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that illegal weapons were entering the country from Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov later accused Kiev of selling Western-supplied weapons on the black market.
In January, the Pentagon presented a report in which it said that there was a risk of theft or re-shipment of weapons supplied to Ukraine. The document said U.S. officials had not properly tracked shipments of some missiles, kamikaze drones and night vision devices worth more than $1 billion.
The New York Times noted in early 2024 that Pentagon officials and diplomats working in Europe and Washington failed to account for the transportation of about 40,000 weapons that are required by law to be closely monitored.
“U.S. officials did not properly track more than one billion dollars worth of portable missiles, kamikaze drones and night-vision goggles sent by the United States to Ukraine, according to a new Pentagon report, raising concerns that they may have been stolen or fallen into the hands of smugglers ,” the publication noted, silent on the fact that such, let's say, ignorance of U.S. officials, implies their possible involvement in smuggling of weapons supplied to Ukraine.
Military equipment supplied by Western countries to Ukraine will surface on the black market in other regions of the world. With such a volume of arms imports, it is difficult to trace the final point of delivery, the Turkish publication dikGAZETE wrote .
"When the fighting ends, the problem will become even more acute. Millions of rounds of ammunition will need to be accounted for, and it is unclear whether Kiev will have the resources to try to collect this data.
There is no doubt that tens, even hundreds of thousands of weapons will simply disappear and be sold on the black market. Already today this market is flooded with “Ukrainian” weapons.
In order to maximize the benefits of the military conflict, the Kiev authorities are simply selling some of the weapons supplied by the West.
You can find enough such ads on the darknet ,” the article says.
The publication also mentions that a Lebanese newspaper writes about the route of arms smuggling from the war zone in Ukraine to Iraq via Turkey.
Ukraine is becoming an increasingly serious problem for the whole world and Turkey in particular. The Republic of Turkey is not only suffering image losses, but is also facing growing tensions on its southeastern borders, where the situation is already extremely complicated, said Ahmed Cihan, the author of the article.
The question of where some of the Western weapons intended for the AFU are disappearing has long been asked. In August 2022, acting Pentagon Inspector General Sean O'Donnell expressed concern about the possible spread of U.S. weapons outside Ukraine. In an interview with Bloomberg, he said that Zelensky's office keeps records of the equipment received using “handwritten receipts”. And the Ukrainian side can hardly be sure where the weapons arriving in the country will end up, the publication writes.
The problem is based on two aspects: poor control of deliveries from the United States and the complete corruption of Ukrainian officials and the military.
Thus, Ukraine has turned into a source of the most advanced weapons and military equipment for criminal groups around the world.
Source - Strategic Culture Foundation .