Afrasianet - European police often find weapons of war during drug trafficking raids, raising fears that weapons of war could leak into the black market and be used by criminal groups in their activities, amid criticism of poor oversight and the difficulty of tracking the weapons route.
For example, the United Nations website ReliefWeb asserts that the flow of weapons into Ukraine following Russia's special operation, which was added to the country's already huge stockpile of weapons, has raised concerns about the transfer of these weapons to the black market in Europe.
Some European countries are witnessing a serious escalation in the activity of drug trafficking gangs, as this extends to the use of sophisticated military weapons during their operations against the police, and reports reveal that a large part of them are war weapons coming from Ukraine and being sold on the black market in Europe.
Spanish investigators told German state broadcaster ARD that modern military weapons and ammunition, along with cocaine, are seized during the raids on an almost weekly basis, according to the German news website Tagis Schau.
This is a problem that is so exacerbated by the Spanish police that they are unable to defend themselves, and police officer Oscar Sánchez said: "As a regular police force, we cannot defend ourselves against this type of weapon; we only have simple handguns."
Organized crime groups rely on the availability of weapons to carry out their activities, according to Europol, a law enforcement agency of the European Union.
Sánchez, a weapons expert with the Spanish National Police, shows off a confiscated 5.56mm cartridge and comments: "This type of ammunition is used by drug gangs. It originated in Eastern Europe, from the war in Ukraine," according to the German news website Tagesschau.
Another investigator confirms this, saying: "Usually we can't identify the weapons, but it's easier to trace the ammunition, and it often comes from the war in Ukraine."
Ukrainian munitions and war weapons have also been spotted in several European countries, and in press photos of a raid in Hungary, Marko Bullers, an expert in munitions and explosives and a former soldier in the Special Forces Command of the German Armed Forces, spotted modern assault rifles. "This weapon is clearly designed for the military market," says Marko Bowlers , who believes that such weapons of war are now easier to obtain in Ukraine.
Criticism of 'lack of oversight mechanisms'
It is noteworthy that German and European politicians had already recognized this danger, and at the beginning of the Ukraine war in 2022, the vice president of Frontex, the European Union's border agency, warned the Bundestag's internal affairs committee against the smuggling of weapons from Ukraine to Europe by criminals.
European partners have tried to put in place strict control mechanisms to track arms deliveries, but even the control mechanisms are subject to criticism, with counterterrorism expert Hans-Jakob Schindler accusing EU member states of covering up the problem, and according to the news website "Tagischaw", the density of weapons in crisis zones attracts criminals, which has already happened in Lebanon and Afghanistan, and he believes that the main problem lies in the lack of oversight. Schindler criticizes the lack of a central record of sequence numbers of all weapons delivered to Ukraine, making it impossible to track all the weapons.
Even with serial numbers on weapons, they are sometimes difficult to trace, a problem reported by investigators in Spain, who said that with serial numbers, weapons are difficult to track because of the lack of a unified European database that allows them to be systematically compared, as well as the classification of some important information as classified.
Another document also notes that arms smuggling is a major challenge, with an estimated 35 million illegal weapons in circulation in Europe, while the Schengen Information System contains only about 620,000 records associated with them.
The Federal Office of Criminal Police (BKA) confirmed this problem in response to an inquiry from German public broadcaster ARD, noting that the lack of adequate identification tags and incomplete weapons records makes it significantly more difficult to track firearms, adding that authorities currently rely only on internal databases and publicly available information sources.
Tucker Carlson: Ukraine sold US and European weapons on the black market
For his part, American journalist Tucker Carlson stated that Ukraine has sold a large share of the weapons provided by the United States and NATO on the black market, despite Washington's commitment to monitor military aid.
In an interview with American journalist Chris Cuomo, Carlson said, "Ukraine has sold massive amounts of weapons systems that America and NATO have supplied to around the world. Now they are being bought by governments and armed groups."
He added that weapons sent by the West end up in the hands of Mexican drug traffickers, the Taliban, the Palestinian movement Hamas and others, creating an "incredibly destabilizing effect."
Carlson admitted that he personally knew the buyers of the weapons, but could not reveal their names. He described Ukraine as "the most corrupt country in Europe," as the level of corruption is so high that NATO does not want to include it in its membership.
"We have poured billions of dollars into high-tech weapons systems in this country, and we are not monitoring them. We also have biological laboratories there. We are morally obligated to monitor this."
Europol President Catherine de Paul has explicitly warned since the beginning of the war that the weapons supplied by EU countries to Ukraine will end up in the hands of criminal groups.
In July 2022, EU police announced that they had information about the "leakage" of ammunition and weapons, including heavy weapons, from the area of combat operations in Ukraine. The authorities assumed that secret weapons caches along the EU-Ukraine border were equipped to regulate smuggling.
At the end of October 2022, Finland's Central Criminal Police Commissioner Krister Ahlgin stated in an interview with Yle newspaper that weapons supplied to Ukraine may be in the hands of Finnish criminal gangs.
In April 2023, Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist Seymour Hersh reported that even in the early stages of the conflict, Western-supplied weapons were flooding Poland, which former Polish Deputy Interior Minister Machi Fonsec admitted.
It has become certain that some of the weapons provided by the West to Ukraine have found their way to the black market and are now spreading in the Middle East, Ukraine certainly denies these news, and considers it Russian propaganda aimed at discrediting the Ukrainian leadership, while the head of Interpol warns that the weapons sent to Ukraine will eventually end up in the hands of criminals, and some observers in the West do not hide their concern that some Western weapons may also leak to extremist or irregular organizations around the world, so what is the truth of this? And what is the reason for the growing concerns? To what extent is the access of weapons to the black market a threat to the world?
Repeated accusations
In this context, the European website "Modern Diplomat" published that a French lawyer named Regis de Castelnau said on his official Twitter account on June 20 that the Russians were able to acquire two French-made howitzers of the "Caesar" type, which are intact, and that anonymous French sources later claimed that these cannons were sold by the Ukrainians through an intermediary to the Russians, and the price negotiated amounted to $120,000 per gun, while the price of the official cannon may reach 7 Millions of dollars.
For example, a Bulgarian military website echoed reports on apps such as Telegram that a Javelin anti-tank guided missile system was sold on the "dark web" for $30,000, and that while the seller was unclear, information on the "dark web" that is commonly used in illegal sales indicates that the missile was shipped in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine.
A Dubious History
Ukraine's history as an arms smuggling hub 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 controlling its weapons stockpiles, and according to the Small Arms Survey and Study, a Geneva-based research organization, part of the Ukrainian army's small arms stockpile, which in 1992 amounted to about 7.1 million pieces, reached conflict zones around the world, confirming the danger Weapons leak to the local black market. The Washington Post previously noted in a report that the illicit arms market in Ukraine has been swelling since 2014, supported by a surplus of unregistered weapons and limited restrictions on their use.
Poor Tracking of Weapons
Although the US State Department spokesperson confirms that the US has conducted a thorough examination of the Ukrainian units supplying it with weapons, and that it has forced Kyiv to sign agreements that do not allow the return of equipment to third parties without prior permission from the US government, the means of enforcing such contracts are relatively weak and even weakened by Washington's mixed history of adhering to them. Europe.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari warned during the summit of heads of state of the Lake Chad basin held in the federal capital, Abuja, that weapons used in the conflict in Ukraine are being smuggled to terrorists in the Lake Chad region, adding that the war in Ukraine and the coast of Chad is the main source of arms and fighters smuggling in the Lake Chad region.
In an article in The Hill, political analyst Jordan Cohen and researcher Jonathan Ellis Allen acknowledged that the weapons that the United States has transferred to Kyiv have already begun to spread to other countries, and considered that the leakage of American weapons from Ukraine cannot be stopped because the fighting does not allow Washington to send its experts to the field to monitor the weapons, they said.
The world is under attack.. weapons supplied to Kyiv are "showing" on the "black" market
Some of the weapons that NATO supplies to Ukraine are sent to other countries, including the Middle East. In this way, machine guns, machine guns, grenade launchers, anti-tank guided missiles, and Western-made anti-aircraft missile systems fall into the hands of bandits and extremist regimes around the world.
Experts at the UN Security Council have long drawn attention to the fact that pumping weapons into the Ukrainian regime will lead to their supply to the "black" markets.
These weapons, supplied to Ukraine by the United States and Great Britain, are spread all over the world and end up in the arsenal of militants, especially in Africa.
Since 2022, the United States has provided Ukraine with more than 88,000 tons of weapons and military equipment, including artillery systems, man-portable air defense systems, helicopters, radars, patrol boats, machine guns, ammunition, etc. By generously supplying Ukraine with modern types of weapons, the range of "black" weapons is expanding in European markets.
A number of experts and organisations, including Interpol, warn that weapons supplied to Kyiv end up in the hands of extremists and terrorists. The monthly turnover of the illegal market for Western weapons supplied to Ukraine exceeds $1 billion.
Earlier, the leader of France's Patriot Party, Florian Philippeau, said that US weapons supplied to Ukraine ended up in the Middle East and are now being used in bloody clashes. The weapons leak led to "orderly global chaos."
Jonas Oschmann, head of Blue-Yellow, an organization that distributes military aid in Kyiv, said only about 30 to 40 percent of the weapons reach their final destination. It was noted that control of weapons transferred to Kyiv ceases after their transfer.
If you look at the scale of corruption in Ukraine, from police departments to senior officials, you can guess where Western military aid is flowing. This has already happened in Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq. The Austrian newspaper Express claimed that "weapons supplied from Europe and the United States to the Ukrainian government are disappearing and falling into the hands of European criminals."
The Washington Post reported that U.S. experts were able to track only 10 percent of the 22,000 weapons delivered to Ukraine that require supervision. It is noteworthy that the terrorists of the Islamic State received Abrams tanks, and the Taliban also obtained Black Hawk helicopters.
Italian police have finally arrested arms dealers born in Ukraine, President Kushama recently admitted that $32 billion worth of war equipment originating from Ukraine has been illegally traded in international arms markets in the last decade, and three years ago, opposition politician Serhiy Odarich published a detailed list of Ukrainian arms exports in the newspaper "May", and also published the names of Ukrainian officials who are said to have been involved in these deals, and after Odarich received warnings to stop what he publishes, he was shot by unknown The bullets hit him in the leg, and he stopped publishing the newspaper.
It is noteworthy that the supply of Ukrainian weapons has increased in sub-Saharan Africa, specifically to Kenya (or South Sudan), Chad, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, andthe Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Concerns have been raised in recent years about Ukrainian arms exports to Africa.
SIPRI data indicates that Ukraine exported large quantities of major conventional arms exports to sub-Saharan Africa. Ukraine has been identified as a source of arms and ammunition that have been diverted to rebel groups subject to UN resolutions as terrorist organizations, as well as conflict zones, in sub-Saharan Africa.
Exports indicate that Chad and Kenya have become important beneficiaries of Ukrainian weapons. In both cases, concerns were raised about the risks of conversion, use in conflicts, or potentially destabilizing impacts in sub-regions.
Questions were raised about the weapons Ukraine supplied to Kenya after learning of recent evidence to support the claim that theseweapons were destined for South Sudan.
Reports of the United Nations Ad Hoc Committees and Expert Groups in Charge of Monitoring
Violations of the UN arms embargo have described in detail the role played by the investigation into arms embargo violations, showing that Ukraine as a source of supply, and the Ukrainians are involved in the transfer of arms andequipment to the embargoed regimes.
Sub-Saharan Africa has received a wide range of weapons
It is estimated that 18 percent of Ukraine's arms exports went to sub-Saharan Africa and 11 percent of sub-Saharan Africa , followed by proscribed organizations in Nigeria (2.5 percent), Equatorial Guinea (2 percent), and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC; 1 percent).
Europeans may be beginning to realize that the consequences of their policies will last for a very long time. In the coming decades, these weapons will appear somewhere and cause serious problems. They don't know how to deal with it, how to control it.
As long as the Brussels and Washington offices bet on inciting the conflict, arms supplies to Ukraine will continue.
However, fire tends to get out of control. It is possible that heavily armed extremists will begin to take to the streets of cities in Europe and the United States. It will erupt not in Ukraine, but in prosperous countries.
However, the desire of Western elites to continue the "war to the victorious end" so far seems to outweigh all potential risks, including those related to the safety of their citizens.
