Ukrainian soldiers risk their lives to keep weapons from black market

WAR IN EUROPE

b10ada81-9fef-4600-90cb-339f79363e24#1_1062632303.jpg

A U.S. volunteer teaches Ukrainian soldiers how to use a Javelin missile at a base outside Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, in April. Ukraine can’t track every shell, but at a time of heightened scrutiny in Washington, the nation knows it can ill afford slips with the big-ticket items. LYNSEY ADDARIO — THE NEW YORK TIMES

Image

By Lara Jakes

The New York Times

WARSAW, Poland >> Rocket launchers, precision-guided missiles and billions of dollars’ worth of other advanced U.S. weapons have given Ukraine a fighting chance against Russia before a counteroffensive. But if even a few of the arms wind up on the black market instead of the battlefield, a Ukrainian lawmaker gloomily predicted, “We’re done.”

The lawmaker, Oleksandra Ustinova, a former anti-corruption activist who now monitors foreign arms transfers to Ukraine, does not believe there is widespread smuggling among the priciest and most sophisticated weapons donated by the United States over the last year.

“We’ve literally had people die because stuff was left behind, and they came back to get it and were killed,” she said of Ukrainian troops’ efforts to make sure weapons were not stolen or lost.

But in Washington, against a looming government debt crisis and growing skepticism about financial support for Ukraine, an increasingly skeptical Congress is demanding tight accountability for “every weapon, every round of ammunition that we send to Ukraine,” as Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., said last month.

By law, U.S. officials must monitor the use, transfer and security of U.S. weapons and defense systems that are sold or otherwise given to foreign partners to make sure they are being deployed as intended. In December, for security reasons, Joe Biden’s administration largely shifted responsibility to Ukraine for monitoring the U.S. weapons shipments at the front, despite Ukraine’s long history of corruption and arms smuggling.

Yet the sheer volume of arms delivered — including tens of thousands of shoulder-fired Javelin and Stinger missiles, portable launchers and rockets — creates a virtually insurmountable challenge to tracking each item, officials and experts caution.

All of which has heightened anxieties among Ukrainian officials responsible for ensuring weapons get to the battlefield.

“It’s impossible, honestly, to ask people to go through their stocks all the time,” said Ustinova, the chair of a committee in Ukraine’s parliament that monitors the transfer of weapons, in an interview in the streets of Warsaw, Poland, last month, as she rushed to catch a train to Kyiv, Ukraine.

At the beginning of the war, she said, “it was just about survival, and people were just passing around Javelins” to repel a column of Russian armor that bore down on Kyiv early in the invasion. While those sorts of weapons are now routinely tracked, it’s still “very difficult” to account for small arms, like rifles, or the millions of artillery shells that the United States and its allies have sent.

The scrutiny is heightened for Javelins, Stingers and other kinds of missiles, as well as small-diameter bombs, certain types of drones, night-vision goggles and other systems being supplied to Ukraine.

But Ustinova said she has seen “zero evidence” of illicit arms transfers of the sort that would destroy Ukraine’s credibility and threaten at least a cutback in U.S. support.

“Once there is smuggling or misuse of weapons, we’re done,” she said.

So far, American officials said, there have been only a handful of cases of suspected arms trafficking or other illicit military transfers of advanced weapons sent to foreign conflicts that must be most closely tracked.

Currently, federal investigators are looking into reports of Javelin shoulder-fired rockets and Switchblade drones being sold online after being taken from Ukraine, according to an American official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a highly sensitive issue.

There was one confirmed report of a Swedish-made anti-tank grenade launcher being smuggled out of Ukraine. But the theft was discovered only after the weapon exploded in the trunk of a car about 10 miles outside Moscow.

The commander of NATO troops in Europe, Gen. Christopher Cavoli, told Congress late last month that he could recall only one case of attempted smuggling since the war began. He said he remained “highly confident” in Ukraine’s ability to secure the nearly $37 billion in U.S. weapons and other security assistance that has been committed so far.