Russian Conflict, Russian Disinformation

"It's hard to avoid trafficking or smuggling [of guns and ammunition; military materiel being transferred from one source to another]."

"We didn't achieve it in former Yugoslavia and probably won't avoid it in Ukraine."

Czech defence minister Jana Cernocova

"We are monitoring these developments [reports of donated weapons sent by NATO nations to Ukraine for defence/offence against Russian military attacks ending up in black market sales] with interest and will leave no stone unturned in our work to ensure the safe delivery and use of military aid [from Canada to Ukraine."

Dan Le Bouthillier, spokesperson Cdn.National Defence 

"Information that Ukraine is becoming a major hub for arms smuggling does not correspond to reality."

"[Those claiming as much] could be part of Russia's information war to discourage international partners from providing Ukraine with weaponry that is necessary for our victory."

"[Weapons movement into or out of Ukraine is closely monitored and supervised by Ukraine and its allies]."

Yuriy Sak, adviser to Ukraine's defence minister

Ukrainian servicemen unload a Boeing 747-412 plane with the FGM-148 Javelin, anti-tank missiles provided by US to Ukraine as part of a military support, at Kiev's airport Boryspil on February 11, 2022. Photo: AFP

 

Apparently, not quite. In the prevailing sense of emergency and urgent need by Ukraine to defend itself from Russia's brutal invasion, NATO allies were prevailed upon to help Ukraine by the provision of military materiel to augment the country's aging stock of Soviet-era military machines. Russia's invasion of Ukraine, though it was rumoured by intelligence agencies in the US and Britain to be imminent, still took the international community by surprise. It was no secret this would be an unequal contest.

Leading NATO members to quickly acquiesce to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's appeal for aid and support. And so, from the date of the February 24 invasion forward, increasing numbers of advanced and powerful weaponry was made available to the Ukraine military by members of NATO in the hope that Ukrainian resolve would succeed in repulsing the Russian advance which has in its fury destroyed critical infrastructure of towns and cities, killed thousands of people, produced millions of displaced and refugees.

Aside from its active military strikes on Ukrainian targets, unrelentingly hitting civilian enclaves including hospitals, schools and government buildings as well as military targets, Moscow has embarked on a slander campaign reminiscent of the kind of scornful dehumanization employed by Nazi Germany against Jews as it prepared its campaign of genocide. And it has also enthusiastically indulged in formulating and dispensing a vast infrastructure of lies, hoping to undermine NATO nations' support of Ukraine.

 

Ukrainian Territorial Defence Forces members train to use an NLAW anti-tank weapon on the outskirts of Kyiv on March 9, 2022. Russia says it will donate captured weapons like these to Moscow-backed militant groups. (Efrem Lukatsky/The Associated Press)

 

Legacy media are now reporting unsubstantiated accusations of actors in Ukraine taking possession of some of the billions of dollars' worth of military equipment and selling it illicitly out of Ukraine into the black market, to other countries and to criminal gangs for profit as illegal goods find willing buyers. The rumours with their sinister implications belittling a nation struggling to defend itself against a daunting enemy, has raised doubts in the minds of Ukraine's defenders within the international community.

The head of Interpol, Jurgen Stock, gave warning that following the conclusion of the conflict whenever that may be, he anticipated that some weapons delivered by allies to Ukraine will be found to have ended up in the hands of European criminals, among others. The European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation noted in April that weapons have been trafficked from Ukraine to organized crime groups.

In all likelihood this is the kind of thing that occurs in all such situations; arms trickle away from their designated recipients through corrupt actions of a number of those involved, and end up on the black market. That these claims are now circulating specifically against Ukraine has a whiff of Kremlin involvement to cast doubt in the minds of the very countries that are attempting to strangle Moscow's economy with biting sanctions.

Motivating, it seems, a number of NATO member states to discuss with Ukraine the issue of tracking the military equipment through a detailed inventory linked to a tracking system specific to weapons supplied by other nations to Ukraine for its defence. Once weapons have been shipped into Ukraine they are distributed without a working record to identify who uses them and what they are used for. Initially they were all tracked, but as the war consumed time and energy, tracking fell by the wayside.

Some questioning the lack of a usefully reliable tracking system, suggest that these weapons forwarded to Ukraine could even fall into Russian hands as well as being sold on the black market. Ukraine's military, on the other hand, signed a declaration when accepting the international communities' military aid that weapons supplied by foreign sources would not be transferred to any organization other than the Ukrainian military. 

 

A viral video shared widely on pro-Kremlin accounts and channels purports to show a black market transaction to sell Javelins and NLAW rocket launchers provided to Ukraine by NATO. But as Newsweek found, there are red flags that put the authenticity of the video in question. Twitter Screenshot

"As the Ukrainian military begins to scale up its deployment of weapons it has received from NATO and its Western partners, in some cases with immediate and devastating effect, pro-Russian social media accounts have ramped up disinformation around the weapons in question."

A video shared on July 13, 2022, by an unverified Twitter account AZmilitary1, claims to be a video recording of a "black market" sale of several weapons provided to Ukraine by NATO."

"The 85-second clip features a black Volksvagen with an AA851EE license plate, which is zoomed-in on at the beginning of the video. Two men are briefly seen shaking hands, before one opens up the trunk of the car and uncovers what appear to be weapon cases....."

Newsweek