As Palestinian militants fired hundreds of rockets and infiltrated areas bordering the Gaza Strip, killing Israeli security personnel and taking hostages, international observers have started raising concerns about the origins of their weapons.
One of them is US House Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who suggested that Hamas may be using US weapons that were either abandoned by US forces during withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 or supplied to the regime in Kiev by the Biden administration since February 2022. She is yet to provide any evidence to back up her claims, however.
Long before such concerns were raised in the West, Russia's Foreign Ministry had repeatedly warned in public that weaponry eagerly provided by the US and NATO to Ukraine may find its way to the global black market.
“I’ve been talking for a year and a half during Russian Foreign Ministry briefings about weapons supplied by NATO and the US to Zelensky spreading across black markets. I’ve even pinpointed the reason for it – corruption in Ukraine and corruption link between Washington and Kiev. I spoke about it, I warned about it, I asked foreign media outlets to look into it,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote in a social media post on October 9.
During a briefing on August 2, for example, Zakharova stated that it has become harder for OSCE member states that supply arms to Kiev to conceal the ever-increasing number of instances of these weapons being stolen and resold on the black market.
“Where and when these weapons supplied to Ukraine by the ‘bleeding-heart’ alliance of Western states are going to surface is an open question. But it is already taking place. Innocent people in any corner of the world, even their own citizens, may end up in the crosshairs of a Czech or a Belgian gun,” she said. “But the EU and NATO states consistently ignore the threat (...) both in Ukraine and abroad.”
She added at the time that, “in light of a high risk of such consequences,” one can accuse Western states of condoning violence elsewhere.
Here are but a few excerpts from Zakharova’s briefings where she sounded the alarm about Western military assistance to Ukraine being diverted to black markets.
On July 26, 2023, Zakharova mentioned a report produced by the Pentagon that essentially admitted that a portion of Western weaponry sent to Ukraine was stolen.
“That same document also mentions that, from February 2022 till September 2022, the Americans were unable to monitor these weapon shipments and only sent the appropriate commission to Ukraine in October 2022,” the spokeswoman said.
She noted that it is unclear how many of these Western weapons got sold on the black market during that time and whether the aforementioned commission could protect “the rest of the weapons and military hardware” supplied by the West from black market dealers.
On July 20, 2023, Zakharova observed that many of the arms shipments sent by Western powers to Ukraine never actually reached the regime in Kiev and the Ukrainian battlefields.
“These weapons end up in the hands of arms dealers and then fall into the hands of terrorists and extremists. This will lead to a surge of terrorist, extremist threat on the continent,” she said.
On May 10, 2023, Zakharova warned that generous Western weapon shipments to Kiev regime spawned “rampant military corruption and weapon smuggling” both in Ukraine and beyond.
She added that US and European officials and media outlets have already concluded that up to 70 percent of the Western assistance “does not reach the Ukrainian Armed Forces – the weapons end up on the black market.”
Commenting on the warning made last summer by Interpol Secretary General Jurgen Stock who mentioned the risk of weapons meant for Kiev ending up on the black market after the end of the Ukrainian conflict, Zakharova argued that he was mostly correct in his assumptions.
“Everything is just as he said. Thing is, it did not take that long. This is taking place as the situation in Ukraine continues to develop,” she said, referring to Ukrainian weapons being sold on the black market.