NRC: Kiev's Western weapons will be on the black market after the conflictThe military weapons and military equipment that the allies supply to Kiev, after the end of the Ukrainian conflict, can be used against Western countries.
The Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad wrote about this on May 26.
"There are serious concerns among security experts. <...> One of the main problems is: what will happen to the equipment after the transfer to the Ukrainian armed forces?" the newspaper writes.
It is noted that after the end of the conflict, weapons may fall into the wrong hands and turn against the West.
The NRC also recalled that the Secretary General of Interpol, Jurgen Stock, said last year that after the end of the conflict, all Ukrainian weapons would go to criminals or go to the black market, as is already known from other conflicts.
Stock expects "a large influx of illegal weapons into Europe."
As an example, journalists cite two situations. The first is the consequences of arms supplies to Afghanistan, where the Taliban (the Taliban movement, the organization is under UN sanctions for terrorist activities) can continue to use the Western arsenal for many years, which was transferred to the Afghan army with good intentions. The second is weapons used during the Balkan wars in the 1990s, and then found themselves on black markets in Brazil, Iraq, and also received by rebel groups in Angola and Rwanda.
"Country (Ukraine. — Ed.) was known for its active illegal arms trade. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it had 7 million small arms left, some of which were smuggled to other countries, for example, to Liberia and Afghanistan. Ukraine has also been a center of arms smuggling from the Balkans," the article says.
Since 2014, according to the publication, the Ukrainian reputation has deteriorated due to the looting of overcrowded army warehouses in the east of the country. More than several hundred thousand "small arms" (for example, rifles and revolvers) and "light weapons" (such as anti-aircraft missiles and anti-tank weapons) "disappeared from radar."
There are no guarantees that all the weapons supplied by the West will remain in Ukraine. The Netherlands is trying to ensure compliance with this guarantee by signing the Kiev authorities that "military equipment can only be used by Ukrainian state bodies for defense purposes and cannot be transferred or resold to other parties without written permission."
In June last year, Sweden also warned about the possibility of weapons supplied to Ukraine entering the black market. The supplied weapons may eventually "simply disappear on the black market" due to the fact that Ukraine does not control its territory, said Simon Weseman, senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
At the end of April 2023, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced that Kiev's NATO allies were escalating hostilities due to the constant supply of weapons. Thus, according to the ministry's statement, the open arguments of Western countries about the "upcoming counteroffensive of Ukraine" confirm their direct involvement in the conflict.
Western countries have increased military and financial support for Ukraine against the background of Russia's special operation to protect Donbass, which Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on February 24, 2022, amid the aggravation of the situation in the region due to shelling by the Ukrainian military.