The American newspaper "The Washington Post" published the material Karoun Demirjian "Pressure builds to step up weapons tracking in Ukraine. Legislation would require greater scrutiny of the $20 billion in military aid President Biden has sent Ukraine, and it has bipartisan support" ("Pressure is increasing to tighten control of arms supplies to Ukraine. The draft of the relevant legislation requires a more thorough study of the military assistance in the amount of $ 20 billion that President Biden sent to Ukraine, and it enjoys the support of both parties in the US Congress.")Loading of containers with GMLRS guided missiles by US Air Force servicemen into a Boeing 767 cargo plane for shipment to Ukraine at the McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst Joint Base (New Jersey), 08/11/2022 (c) Matt Porter / US Air Force
Buoyed by their success in the midterm elections, House Republicans, who will have a slim majority in the next congress, have warned the Biden administration to expect much tighter controls on the extensive military aid it has provided to Ukraine.
The administration, anticipating such demands as the volume of military aid under President Biden is rapidly approaching $20 billion, has been working in recent weeks to publicize its efforts to track arms shipments. Both the State Department and the Pentagon have outlined plans, including additional inspections and training of Ukrainians, designed to prevent American weapons from falling into the wrong hands, but these initiatives have so far failed to silence Republican skeptics calling for audits and other transparency measures.
Most in Washington agree that, in general, the desire for increased oversight is a good thing. But experts warn that there are reasonable restrictions in providing reliable reporting on all arms shipments to Ukraine, which are likely to leave Biden's harshest critics unsatisfied.
"Even under the most favorable circumstances, end-user monitoring has disadvantages, and, of course, Ukraine is not in the best circumstances," said Elias Yousif, an expert on the global arms trade from the Stimson Center. - "With regard to what we can see at the output, there must be a certain desire to get something that has practical value."
Until recently, the megaphone of the demand for change was controlled mainly by the Republican Party. Congress "will make our government accountable for funding Ukraine in full," Republican member of the Georgia House of Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene said this month, announcing measures to audit the aid program after Biden requested another $37 billion for Kiev. "From now on, transparency is mandatory," Kevin McCarthy, a member of the House of Representatives from California, the current Republican leader in the lower house of Congress, said in an interview with CNN, while warning against providing Ukraine with an "unfilled bearer check" to repel the Russian invasion.
And yet the reckoning may begin even before the Republicans come to power. A number of provisions formulated in the version of the annual defense appropriations bill adopted by the House of Representatives this year will require a cross-reporting system through the Pentagon and inspectors General who control the transfer of military items, as well as the creation of a task force to develop and implement stricter monitoring measures.
In contrast to the growing skepticism in the ranks of Republicans regarding Ukraine, such provisions of the bill - although they have yet to be coordinated with the version of the corresponding Senate bill, which is still under consideration in the upper house - are largely supported by representatives of both parties.
"Taxpayers deserve to know that the funds are being spent for their intended purpose," Democrat Jason Crow, a member of the Colorado House of Representatives, who is also a veteran of the armed forces, said in an interview.
Crowe led the work of the House Armed Services Committee on the inclusion in the defense appropriations bill of instructions to the Inspector General of the US Department of Defense regarding the analysis, audit, investigation and other measures necessary to verify the Pentagon's activities in support of Ukraine. He considers these instructions "necessary", although he does not count himself among the critics hinting at the frivolity of the approach of the American military department and the Ukrainian side to this issue.
"In any war, there may be miscalculations and misuse of material resources," he explained his position. At the same time, Crowe admits that there are probably some restrictions on the amount of accounting that the United States can provide.
"We are not playing an exemplary performance of tasks here. This is a brutal large-scale war in the land theater - a war for every house, for every street, for every trench. Losses are inevitable there," he believes. "We are not trying to prevent every item we hand over to Ukrainians from falling into the hands of Russians, but we want to make sure that this phenomenon is not of a large-scale nature."
Lawmakers, officials of the US Department of Defense and experts all note that there are not so many real reasons for concern yet. Ukraine, in their opinion, productively disposed of the military assistance received from the United States, promptly reporting on that. This, according to officials, is to a large extent a consequence of Kiev's activities to increase the volume of aid. There is also a feeling that Ukrainians have put too much existential national pride at stake to risk the course and outcome of their struggle to expel Russians by pumping weapons to the black market.
However, even the shadow of the threat of smuggling of deadly equipment alarmed many - especially given the fact that the West also supplies weapons "small things" to this country, which is difficult to track against the background of the desperate struggle of Ukrainian civilians for basic survival.
This is partly due to practical limitations. According to Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Patrick Ryder, the United States carries out inspections of supplied weapons on the territory of Ukraine, "when and where security conditions allow," in places that "are not near the line of contact [forces] Russia and Ukraine". Ryder refused to provide more detailed information about the inspection program for reasons of operational camouflage, the safety of military personnel and the safety of military property.
Nevertheless, according to official data, the US State Department has a limited budget to finance the activities of inspectors of military supplies staying on the territory of Ukraine, and, therefore, cannot check every incoming batch of weapons. As of early November, the Americans have conducted only two face-to-face inspections since the start of the war in February, which is about 10 percent of the 22 thousand units of weapons provided by the United States, including portable Stinger anti-aircraft missile systems and Javelin anti-tank missile systems, which require particularly strict control.
Crowe and others want the State Department to expand its list of specialists to conduct more regular inspections at warehouses inside the country and at points of reception and transfer of special property.
There is another reason - legislation. "End-user control" is regulated by the US Arms Export Control Act (AECA), which requires the US presidential administration to provide "adequate guarantees" that recipients of US military assistance use weapons for their intended purpose and comply with all requirements stipulated by the United States.
In most cases, this check takes place exclusively in the place where the weapon is placed at the disposal of Ukrainians. Only in special cases, as a rule, when secret technologies are used in the design of weapons, "enhanced" control is required in relation to the recipient country. This is expressed in tracking the serial numbers of products and providing reports from the field. In Ukraine, such products include Stinger MANPADS, Javelin ATGM, Avenger SAM and night vision devices.
The existing system is not quite good, a number of legislators claim, noting that before the war, Ukraine occupied a very low place in global corruption perception indices.
"Given the volume of our military supplies, we are responsible for the control of third parties. And we do it all over the world," Republican Mike Waltz, a member of the Florida House of Representatives, said in an interview. He noted that this practice is used everywhere from India to Israel and in relation to countries "that are much higher in the index of perception of corruption and transparency" than Ukraine.
Waltz, along with Crowe and other congressmen, took part in the activities of the House Armed Services Committee to promote a number of provisions of the defense appropriations bill agreed by representatives of both parties, calling for stricter control of military supplies; he supports efforts to provide the Ukrainian military with modern weapons systems. At the same time, he believes that the Biden administration was too careful in using US citizens in order to get a clearer idea of how American weapons are handled.
"Now there are groups of veterans operating all over the country," Waltz said, offering to subcontract to control the use of American weapons in the zone adjacent to the line of contact of the parties and submit appropriate reports to the Ministry of Defense and the US State Department. In addition, Waltz insists that American inspectors should be given the opportunity to visit not only central storage bases on the territory of Ukraine, but also military authorities "up to the level of the brigade headquarters or even a battalion" without unnecessary risk.
Until now, the Biden administration has resisted the pressure exerted on it to send inspectors or other military personnel deep into Ukraine, fearing an escalation of the conflict. According to American officials who agreed to discuss military issues on condition of anonymity, American specialists are currently conducting weapons inspections without being armed themselves, a condition that would probably prove short-lived if they were sent closer to the line of contact between the sides.
Informed officials and lawmakers claim that the Biden administration was adamant that it would not interfere in a situation that risks being interpreted by the Kremlin as direct American involvement in the war.
However, Waltz noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin is conducting a propaganda campaign accusing the United States and NATO of covert actions in Ukraine in order to turn the country's population against Moscow. "On the part of the administration, this is self-restraint," he says. "There is a risk in the activities of those who check where all this assistance is directed and help Ukrainians use it more effectively, but it is acceptable."
