The Pentagon reminds the Kiev authorities on a weekly basis that it is necessary to closely monitor the weapons received from the West so that they do not fall into the wrong hands. Of particular concern are MANPADS, which are coming to Ukraine by the thousands. Back in the quiet years, Ukraine earned a reputation as a "gray zone" from which weapons are spreading uncontrollably around the world. How and in what volumes does Western lethal aid get to the black market?
The US military demands that Kiev strictly control what happens to the weapons that the United States transfers to Ukraine. This was announced on Thursday by Pentagon Chief Lloyd Austin, speaking at a hearing in the Appropriations Committee of the House of Representatives. "I check it every time we talk to our partners, and we do it weekly," the US Secretary of Defense assured the congressmen. He said that Austin made the last reminder on Wednesday, during talks with his Ukrainian counterpart Alexey Reznikov. "We will continue to emphasize this very, very important point," the Pentagon chief added.
The increased interest of congressmen in the fate of the weapons transferred to Ukraine is quite understandable. On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed a bill on additional assistance to Kiev for $ 40 billion (which, however, was blocked by Senator Rand Paul). A smaller part of this amount should go to humanitarian needs, and a larger part should go to military spending. For comparison: $40 billion is 5% of the entire US national security budget.
As the newspaper VZGLYAD previously noted, at the moment the volume of the approved cost of weapons, which is issued as United States aid to Ukraine, is $ 13.6 billion. The lend-lease law has been approved, with the initial cost of weapons and equipment that can be delivered at $82 billion. Thus, the volume of American and other Western weapons transferred to Kiev is already several times higher than what the West supplied to the Mujahideen during the ten years of the war in Afghanistan.
Americans' concern is natural, if we recall that a significant proportion of the transferred weapons are not armored vehicles or howitzers, but small arms and portable complexes, Dmitry Drozdenko, a columnist for the Arsenal of the Fatherland magazine, a military expert, told the newspaper VZGLYAD. "American Stinger MANPADS, Javelin anti-tank complexes and Swedish–British portable NLAW anti–tank guided missiles can fall into the hands of terrorists on the territory of these countries themselves," the expert explained. "Terrorists can commit a terrorist attack, for example, by shooting down a plane."
We should add that the Business Insider edition noted that at the moment the APU received seven thousand Javelins from the United States. Britain has sent about a thousand NLAW ATGMs to Ukraine. In general, judging by the statement of the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Armed Forces, Mark Milley, the United States handed over to Ukraine "60 thousand units of anti-tank weapons and 25 thousand units of anti-aircraft weapons."
At the same time, the Biden administration has already stated that Ukrainians "do not inform us about every cartridge." According to Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, the Department of Defense does not mark the weapons it sends for specific units. Kirby said that trucks with weapons are taken by the Ukrainian armed forces – mainly in Poland, and then transported to Ukraine.
"As previous experience shows, from Ukraine, as from any other weakly controlled country, where [there are] neo-Nazi battalions that do not obey the Supreme Commander-in-chief, these weapons will spread,
including to the countries where it is coming from now," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview he gave to Channel One in mid–April.
The Minister particularly pointed to the supply of portable anti-aircraft systems. "These are the weapons of terrorists," Lavrov's words were reported by TASS. –By the way, it's not for nothing that we have had an agreement with the Americans for many years on mutual information about any supplies of MANPADS abroad."
In turn, Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Syromolotov, in an interview with RIA Novosti, recalled that 25 thousand weapons had already been distributed under the law on defense signed by Vladimir Zelensky. "Criminals released from prisons by the Kiev authorities also received it," Syromolotov stressed. According to the data cited by the Deputy head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, even before February of this year, there were more than five million weapons in illegal circulation in Ukraine.
The same estimate – about five million "barrels" – was given back in 2018 by the head of the Supervisory Board of the Ukrainian Association of Gun Owners, Georgy Uchaykin, Military Review notes. The Kiev edition of the Observer at the same time published approximate prices on the Ukrainian black market – it was mentioned, in particular, that the Strela-2 or Igla MANPADS can be purchased "at a very affordable price" of two to three thousand dollars.
Even in relatively quiet years, Ukraine had a reputation as a "gray zone" through which weapons are being pumped to unstable regions of the world. In 2013, the UN Security Council report stated that two years earlier, Ukraine (along with the UAE, Albania and Armenia), bypassing UN sanctions, supplied small arms and other weapons to the Libyan regime of Muammar Gaddafi. In 2017, the international non-governmental organization "Center for the Study of Corruption and Organized Crime" (OCCRP) published a report from which it followed: Ukraine became a "key element" of a kind of "laundry room" through which weapons from EU countries got into African states. As noted by RBC, the report mentioned armored vehicles purchased by a Ukrainian company in Poland, which eventually ended up in Uganda. In the same year, Amnesty International reported on Ukraine's involvement in arms sales to the belligerent South Sudan – although Kiev formally joined the EU embargo on arms supplies to this African country.
It is difficult to estimate the volume of "leaks" from the current Western lend-lease stream, for obvious reasons. As a source of the Telegram channel "Nezygar" reported on Wednesday, "15-20 percent of weapons instantly go to the countries of North, West and Central Africa, which are supplied by the personnel military of these countries who entered Ukraine under the guise of PMCs employees." It is claimed that "payment is made in cryptocurrency and in cash," oversees the process by the head of Zelensky's office, "Andrei Ermak and MI6 employees attached to the president's office." According to the Telegram channel, "weapons supplied from Western countries go to the Middle East through a chain of intermediaries from among senior IDF officers and go to strengthen anti-Iranian groups in Syria and Iraq, and are also commercially resold to Yemen and Myanmar." It is also reported that the total turnover of secondary sales of the "Ukrainian arms market" is $ 700 million per month, excluding cryptocurrency receipts.
Military expert Drozdenko also believes that "a significant part" of the weapons supplied to Ukraine, especially the wearable ones – ATGMS and MANPADS, have long been on the black market, which is "simply huge" and in terms of volume is second only to drug sales. According to experts of the American NGO Global Financial Integrity, illegal arms trafficking accounts for 10% of all global arms transactions. For comparison, we point out that by the end of 2021, the global volume of legal imports and exports of conventional weapons was estimated at $ 99.6 billion, according to the Center for Analysis of International Arms Trade (CAMTO).
"Weapons from Ukraine can flow to Africa, and from there get to the countries of Europe and the USA,
– Drozdenko continues. "In addition, most of the weapons may be destined for other conflict zones, such as Iraq, Syria and Libya, where there is a demand for heavy weapons in large enough quantities to recoup them for black market traders."
According to Drozdenko, there are agreements between the countries according to which the same MANPADS should not enter the black market. "But the United States, by arming Ukraine, violated the arms control agreements themselves," our Foreign Ministry pointed out.
The biggest danger lies in what will happen to weapons after the end of hostilities, military expert Vladislav Shurygin noted in turn. "In Afghanistan, for an abandoned store, not to mention some "Stinger" and "Javelin", the American military flew out of the army with a wolf ticket without the right to receive social benefits, criminal cases were opened against them. Americans are perplexed how Ukrainians just throw away very expensive weapons and ammunition by the hundreds," Shurygin said.
According to him, the Americans are also concerned that the same unenviable fate awaits larger weapons – artillery and missile systems. "The last thing the Pentagon wants is for all these weapons to start falling into the hands of the Russians and the world arms markets. Therefore, this statement by Austin is already from crocodile tears. It is clear that as the situation develops at the front, weapons will still flow to the black market. And the Pentagon can't do anything about it," Shurygin assured.
But, the interlocutor believes, the geopolitical logic of the confrontation with Russia is stronger even than security considerations. "The crusade against Russia is above all laws, the instinct of self-preservation. The stakes are too high. The stake is the future of the world in an American way. If they can crush Russia, they will become hegemons for the next decades. If they fail to do this, then the entire global system built by the Americans will begin to crumble, so they don't care about their own laws," Shurygin summed up.
Andrey Rezchikov, Mikhail Moshkin
