Afrasianet - In a blacked-out American testimony, a report was issued on the process of arming Ukraine since February 24, stating that only 30 percent of the weapons sent by the West to the Ukrainian army eventually reach their "nuclear destination".
The report says that advanced Western weapons play a decisive role in the war, especially since the battles take place mostly with old Soviet weapons, and that, in general, they are similar to World War II in terms of building bunkers, barricades and mutual artillery bombardment.
The report indicates that the bulk of the weapons are delivered to the Polish border, where American and European units from NATO hand them over to Ukrainian officials at the border.
And there exactly ends the US and Western supervision of weapons, according to "Arming Ukraine," which is the title of the 23-and-a-half-minute tape.
The report confirms that the West, and in particular the United States of America, know that weapons sent to Ukraine find their way to other places, especially to conflict areas, or fall into the hands of terrorist organizations on their way.
The report collects some testimonies that point in this direction, says Jonas Ohmann, one of the officials in charge of the "Blue-Yellow" organization that has worked to arm Ukrainian units since 2014 and is based in Lithuania: "All these goods go across the border, and then Something happens, about 30 percent of them reach their final destination."
The United States has allocated 23 billion dollars in military support to Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion, while Britain has allocated 3 billion and 700 million dollars, Germany 1.4 billion and Poland 1.8 billion, in addition to European support as well.
The report confirms, based on the testimonies of some people in Ukraine, that some of these weapons fall into the hands of dealers who sell them on the black market, which is a relatively prosperous market in Ukraine since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The work deals with talking about "men of influence and oligarchs, as well as Ukrainian politicians," without making a clear accusation against any party. Ohman, for example, relies on a network of people who do not represent the Ukrainian state, since his organization is not allowed, from a legal point of view, to actually supply weapons.
It delivers military helmets, war sights, de facto vests, and drones to these fighters, which are distributed over networks.
Flowing gun chaos? A second testimony presented by the report is given to Andy Milburn, a retired US Navy officer (colonel), who previously served in Somalia and Iraq and founded the "Mozart" group in Kiev after the war. “If you want to secure supplies or build a network of logistics, you need to put some system in place, no?
If you want to stop at the Ukrainian border because you're not in a position to get too involved, don't be surprised if you don't "Arms reach their final destination. People already knew they weren't going to go where they had to go, and that's the surprise."
Milburn called for the deployment of US military personnel in civilian clothes to Ukraine only to ensure that "the right thing happens", that is, the proper transfer of weapons. Another thing that the report mentions is that Ukraine declared general mobilization and every person over the age of 16 is prohibited from traveling.
Hence, a large amount of young people are also arming. In one of the interventions, Donatella Rovera, a senior advisor at Amnesty International, said that no one really knows where Western weapons go.
This is the second criticism coming from "Amnesty" to Ukraine in the same week.
Rovira added that there is concern as some countries that send weapons to Ukraine believe that "it is not their responsibility to put in place an oversight mechanism, which is strict, to make sure where these weapons are going, how they are used today, and how they are used in the future." Amnesty International published a report criticizing the Ukrainian army, which angered Kiev and prompted the director of the organization's Kiev office to submit her resignation.
Arms proliferation experts believe that what is happening in Ukraine is "somewhat normal" and happened previously in Iraq, after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003 following the war, when the Americans sent a lot of weapons to the country rich in natural resources. In 2014, the Islamic State took control of large weapons stores that were intended for Iraqi forces.
In Afghanistan, after the withdrawal of US forces in August, the Taliban took control of many Western weapons.
So, since the outbreak of battles between Moscow and its neighbor Kiev in February 2022, the fate of the weapons sent by Western countries and NATO to Ukraine has remained in doubt. Similar explanations revealed the theft of weapons that NATO sends to Ukraine, and their resale abroad, and fearing the anger of the West, the Kiev authorities were forced to open investigations into corruption cases related to those responsible for stealing Western military aid.
The Ukrainian authorities opened an investigation into the theft of weapons and ammunition stores on the eastern front, especially Kharkiv province, and their registration as "missing" in the combat zones, and their sale to foreigners.
Western countries and NATO sent billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine during the Russian-Ukrainian war. The recent Western aid package included modern tanks, including the German Leopard 1 and 2 tanks, and the British Challenger, to participate for the first time in the war.
And not only that, Western countries sent modern air defense systems, the latest of which is the long-range American Patriot system, which Poland sent to Ukraine. However, Ukraine insists on its demands to obtain modern Western fighters, including the American F-16, as Washington revealed its program to train Ukrainian pilots, without revealing its purpose.
Other information spreads on the dark web about the sale of Western weapons from Ukraine.
For example, a Bulgarian military website echoed news published on applications such as Telegram about the sale of a Javelin anti-tank guided missile system on the dark web. for $30,000, and that while the seller was unclear, information on the "dark web" often used for illegal sales indicated that the missile was being shipped to Kiev, the capital of Ukraine.
The history of Ukraine does not inspire optimism, as the history of Ukraine as a center for arms smuggling dates back to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, as the Soviet army left behind large quantities of small arms and light weapons in Ukraine, without keeping adequate records and monitoring its stockpiles of weapons, and according to the Small Arms Survey and Study Organization, A research organization based in Geneva, part of the stock of small arms of the Ukrainian army, which in 1992 amounted to about 7.1 million pieces, arrived in conflict areas around the world, which confirms the danger of weapons leaking into the local black market.
Although a State Department spokesperson asserts that the United States has thoroughly vetted the Ukrainian units it supplies weapons to, and has forced Kiev to sign agreements that do not allow equipment to be transferred back to third parties without prior permission from the US government, the means of enforcing such contracts are Relatively weak, and even more so because of Washington's mixed history of compliance with it, and it is not clear Washington's ability to track weapons when they enter one of the largest smuggling centers in Europe.
The warnings were not limited to experts, but extended to the International Police Organization (Interpol), as its president, Jürgen Stock, warned that weapons sent to Ukraine would reach the hands of criminals, and for this reason he urged member states to cooperate in tracking down small firearms and heavy weapons that could spread.
Through the hidden economy, noting that criminal groups are keen to exploit this chaos to smuggle weapons, not only to neighboring countries, but to other continents.
According to William Hartung, an arms control expert at the Quincy Institute think tank, US aid to Ukraine exceeds the peak of US military assistance to Afghan security forces during the 20-year war, and while the US had a significant presence in the country, it at least created traceability of weapons. However, the US government ignores the issue of arms control for civilian militias and the military in Ukraine.