Russia reiterates warning over black market Ukrainian weapons

The Foreign Ministry in Moscow has compiled a list of briefings in which it raised the alarm about unchecked weapons deliveries to Kiev

 

The unchecked delivery of Western weapons to Ukraine has resulted in a large amount of these arms ending up in the hands of organized criminal groups and extremists around the world, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has again claimed. 

On Tuesday, the diplomat published a compilation of excerpts from briefings over the past 18 months in which Moscow consistently raised concerns and provided evidence testifying to the unchecked spread of weapons supplied to Kiev. 

Zakharova suggested that the reason for this phenomenon was rampant corruption in Ukraine as well as corrupt ties between Washington and Kiev. Despite Moscow repeatedly calling for international media to highlight the issue, major Western news outlets have refused to conduct investigations or assess the data, the spokeswoman added. 

Below is a collection of briefings conducted by the Russian Foreign Ministry since March 24, 2022, in which it warned the international community on the issue.

READ MORE: Hamas using weapons given to Ukraine – ex-Russian president

 

August 2, 2023 briefing

 “…By supplying all these weapons to the neo-Nazis in Kiev, the West encourages human rights violations by the receiving state, escalates the armed confrontation and becomes an accomplice in the war crimes perpetrated by the Ukrainian Armed Forces against civilians on both sides of the line of contact. They are bound by specific commitments as OSCE member states and everything they do is at odds with these commitments.

<...> However, with massive deliveries of military products to the Kiev regime, Western OSCE member states find it increasingly challenging to conceal the multiple facts exposing theft, the reselling of weapons and their transfers to arms traffickers.

It remains an open question where the next shipment of weapons to Ukraine by the would-be compassionate Western alliance surfaces. But this is happening. Czech and Belgian rifles may well target innocent people, including their own citizens, anywhere around the world. However, NATO and EU countries have been persistently ignoring the threat of nationalists, radicals or terrorists in or outside Ukraine getting their hands on these state-of-the-art weapons. Considering that the risks in this regard are quite high, we can go as far as to conclude that Western countries encourage terrorist activity.”

 

July 26, 2023 briefing

 “…This is confirmed by the Pentagon’s recent report. The West should trust this document. The US media amplified its contents. The report states that part of Western arms sent to Ukraine was stolen. It notes that from February to September 2022, the Americans had no opportunity to follow up on supplied arms. They sent an audit commission to Ukraine only in October 2022. What happened before October 2022? The Americans had been supplying arms for over half a year without any control. Meanwhile, we understand what Kiev officials are all about. They don’t feel sorry for their own mothers in the same way as Zelensky doesn’t care about his grandfather. We can only guess how many arms went to the black market and whether the Pentagon commission can guarantee in any way its ability to prevent dealers and other poachers from laying their hands on them. These figures won’t be long in coming. Obviously, these arms will repeatedly surface in different parts of the world. Unfortunately, they are already in the hands of terrorists and other criminals.”

 

July 20, 2023 briefing 

 “…At the same time, they are not analysing how the weapons that are now being supplied en masse to the black market will be used. The issue is about illegal weapons, because many shipments don’t even make it to Kiev, much less the battlefields. They end up in the hands of dealers and then fall into the hands of terrorists and extremists. This will exacerbate the terrorist and extremist threat on the continent.”

 

July 6, 2023 briefing 

 “…To believe numerous media reports, neo-Nazi groups are directly involved in the unrest in France. Has anyone in the Elysee Palace thought about this? If not, it is time to. Here’s more food for thought – the weapons supplied to Kiev are landing in the hands of protesters and are being used against the police in France. Has President Emmanuel Macron told the nation about this or is it a secret? Then we’ll say it ourselves. The weapons supplied by the West, NATO and France in particular, and the funds invested in the support of nationalists, Nazis and fascists in Ukraine is having blowback on their own territory and their people. We predicted this a year and a half ago.”

 

June 21, 2023 briefing 

 “…At the same time, the European Union is not eager to keep providing for Ukraine. Sooner or later, European voters will ask (and they are already starting to raise questions) how their taxes have been spent, when they see criminals killing their fellow citizens with weapons brought into their countries from Ukraine via the black market – because these supplies did not reach Bankovaya Street (and even if they reached it, they were immediately resold). According to the scheme in which the Kiev regime is involved, these weapons are not documented anywhere. And then EU residents will start asking questions. How long it takes before this happens also depends on them. They will want to know where their taxes went. Where is the output from the previous financial injections into the Kiev regime?”

 

June 15, 2023 briefing 

 “…In addition, we have repeatedly issued warnings about the danger of flooding the Armed Forces of Ukraine with Western weapons and equipment, as well as their unchecked spread and falling into the hands of sabotage and criminal groups. Making Belgian light firearms available to Ukrainian terrorists and saboteurs is far from the first such case. There are earlier examples of them being illegally used by the Taliban and Mexican drug cartels. Were the assault rifles randomly scattered in a poppy field as well? The West does not want and cannot control the flow of weapons coming into Ukraine. The Western assessments (not ours, not related to us and not affiliated with the Russian Federation) show that the illegal black market of weapons is gathering pace due to the weapons supplied to the Kiev regime. The amount of money is outlandish. The Kiev regime sold its mother, Ukraine, and its fathers and forefathers. It’s not only about weapons. They will be selling everything that falls into their hands. These are people without a moral core. They have no morality or ideals that would hold them back.”

 

May 24, 2023 briefing 

 “…I believe that instead of planting fake news stories the US State Department should take up the specific and substantive weapons-related issue. I’m talking about unchecked supplies in that region through their entities under the pretext of providing assistance to the Kiev regime. In fact, these weapons have been popping up for a long time now not only in Europe, but other continents as well. Instead of engaging irresponsibly in this rhetoric, the US State Department should open up on whether it realises the fact that the weapons it supplies to Kiev as part of an assistance effort go immediately to the black market. Do they have any information on that? What can they say to this? Do they feel any responsibility?”

 

May 10, 2023 briefing 

 “…The continuing supply of Western weapons to the Kiev regime has led to large-scale military corruption and arms smuggling in Ukraine and beyond it.

Over the past few months, the American and European officials and media have conducted several investigations that led them to conclude that between 60 and 70 percent of Western weapons never reach Ukraine but are delivered directly to the black market. This is not reverse trading or covert deals but direct deliveries to a “non-addressee.”

Interpol Secretary General Jurgen Stock warned last year that the wide availability of weapons during the Ukraine conflict would lead to the proliferation of illicit weapons in the post-conflict phase, with the weapons ending in the hands of organised crime and terrorists. There is only one thing he was wrong about: the proliferation of illicit weapons did not begin after the conflict but during it.

The US Congress announced an audit of US spending and supplies to Ukraine in November 2022 and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak followed suit in December 2022. The reason is that the country has become a black hole. This may suit some people, but not everyone. Some people in Europe are apparently starting to consider what they will tell their voters when the guns sent to Ukraine “on paper” are used to kill Europeans. They will have to tell their voters how these supplies were controlled and how they were delivered to Ukraine. The truth will hit those who are generously signing the bills for the murder of Russians and Ukrainians out there, like a ton of bricks.

We have said this on numerous occasions, without any sarcasm or glee, trying to warn them about the backlash. This is more than a simple boomerang effect, because some of these weapons disappear on the Western black markets before reaching the border with Ukraine, and some of them are traded by the recipients on the battlefield. There are examples of such trade by those in Ukraine who were to receive these weapons directly on the battlefield, while the Ukrainian armed forces received completely different weapons. There are numerous reports to this effect in the public media.

Last January, a group of US government auditors arrived in Ukraine to ensure accountability with regard to the US military and financial aid. Oh, how naïve these US auditors are to believe that someone will tell them anything and that somehow they will be able to get to the truth.

A Transparency International report on the 2022 corruption problem in 180 countries graphically demonstrated the level of corruption among Ukrainian state officials. Let me remind you that Transparency International is one of those organisations that habitually salute the Kiev regime, post Ukraine support symbols on their websites, and have fully associated themselves with the West in this matter. They just cannot be suspected of being on our side. And yet, the report has assigned one of the lowest ratings to Ukraine (33 points out of the 100 possible), with the experts coming to the conclusion that the risk of wrongdoers misappropriating foreign financial aid was great both during the hostilities in Ukraine and later. They have no doubt as to what is happening to that financial aid. And the central point is that this is dangerous rather than just bad because of corruption. Embezzlement is not the only problem. There are also stolen weapons that end up in the hands of criminal elements, organised crime groups, terrorists and extremists, rather than in a museum or a rubbish dump.”

 

May 3, 2023 briefing 

 “…We have been discussing the issue of all types of weapons supplied to Kiev disappearing and then surfacing somewhere else for more than a year now as it was happening. Before that, we covered this in various aspects as well, but it’s been a year now that we have been talking about what is going on in real life and will be happening in the short term. Everything we have been talking about for a long time (we revisit this issue literally every day) has come true.

Interestingly, not everyone in the West (to put it mildly) wants to see this. It is clear why Washington does not want to see this, since this is part of their strategy to destabilise the situation in Europe. It’s obvious. However, EU officials, representatives, and political movements who are at the helm and have access to corresponding information are looking the other way, too, and it’s not clear why. I think that the usual answer will work here as well: some of them are proxies or conductors of Washington’s will and others, clearly due to political circumstances, prefer to remain silent, oblivious of where this silence will take them.

Ironically, weapons of all kinds, including heavy weapons, made it to European black markets a long time ago. What are these black arms markets? You know well this is not about some kind of a field of dreams, a garden or a backyard where the situation can be controlled one way or another. Speaking of weapons, the black market is everywhere because of the internet which offers an opportunity to use blockchain to acquire technology through online information chains that are not controlled by governments or special services.

It includes organised crime, drug trafficking, human trafficking, robbery, thuggery and, among other things, the transshipment of all this to other parts of the world. Some things remain in the EU, some go to other places. Clearly, they are under an illusion that this transit part will not affect them. They lived in this illusion when they were creating the Arab Spring with their own hands, destroying Libya, or trying to occupy Syria. Later, they had to come to their senses when tens, hundreds of thousands, and millions of migrants showed up at their doorstep with their problems and woke them up. Then, they were compelled to move from their illusory world to the real world.

We never stopped talking about it.”

 

April 12, 2023 briefing 

 “…The Ukrainian army and foreign mercenaries are using weapons supplied by the West to destroy the civilian populations of the DPR, LPR, and the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, including women and children. Ukrainian artillery carries out regular strikes on residential areas and civilian infrastructure, and the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant is being shelled with all the ensuing threats of a nuclear catastrophe. We have repeatedly sounded the alarm, reporting that Western weapons sent to Ukraine, including anti-aircraft and anti-tank systems, are spreading around the world due to endemic corruption in the country’s political and military circles. They eventually pop up in other regional conflicts, fall into the hands of crime rings, terrorists and extremists, including in Europe, the blossoming “garden” that Josep Borrell spoke about. The challenges this poses will not leave anyone safe, creating a threat to the internal security of every state on the European continent, and in particular their civilian air traffic.

This is the simplest analytics available to everyone. It is not so difficult to read what happened after the United States and the anti-Iraqi coalition’s occupation and aggression against Baghdad – where the weapons ended up, what terrorist attacks occurred, what terrorist groups were formed, and what threats emerged to peace and security. The same holds true for Libya and the Arab Spring. The world has been through this. Apparently, the Western regimes failed to draw any conclusions from those mistakes (or to correct their mistakes).”

 

February 17, 2023 briefing 

“…Meanwhile, in reality, in terms of criminal law, they have long since become not only accomplices but the instigators of the crimes by the Kiev regime. It is revealing that the emptying of their own arsenals is compelling Ukraine’s Western curators to wonder where earlier supplied weapons have gone. Have they reached the frontline at all? Or have profits from their resale landed in the pockets of Kiev officials? Filth, horror, stench – this is what characterises the collaborationism of the Kiev regime with the NATO-centric world.

Judging by the results of the Brussels get-togethers, one gets the impression that the NATO countries are pumping Ukraine full of arms also for the enrichment of the Western military-industrial complex, above all American defence industry, in a bid to keep it flush with contracts for a long time to come. This is classic colonial logic. Probably this is slave logic, not even colonial. Otherwise, it is impossible to explain their obsession with getting rid of their arsenals to the detriment of their national security, especially since the products ordered today will be made only two or three years later. These irresponsible actions are hitting rank-and-file Europeans who will have to pay for this entire bloody banquet.”

 

January 12, 2023 briefing 

"... We have repeatedly spoken, in Foreign Ministry briefings and other statements, about the evidence of numerous instances of the misuse of the weapons supplied by NATO countries to Ukraine. 

Since the first weeks, we have warned that these weapons would spread across the European continent, and no one would ever be safe there from being attacked with one of these weapons sold on the black market. This is already an industry. It has gone beyond isolated facts or cases; it is a global reality.

On June 1, 2022, Interpol Secretary General Jürgen Stock warned that after the end of the conflict in Ukraine, there is a high probability that illegal trade in weapons originally intended for Kiev would intensify.

 

https://www.rt.com/russia/584580-russia-mfa-ukraine-weapons/

 

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