As the US and its allies continue to send everything from small arms to anti-tank missiles, armor, artillery, and now, by all reports, ATACMS to Ukraine, Russia has continuously warned that such military assistance only serves to prolong the conflict. Furthermore, weapons delivered to Kiev have been making their way to the black market.
Whenever you send weapons to Ukraine, there is always a risk that some of them end up on the black market, a UK military analyst has warned on British media.
The words of caution came from retired UK Air Vice-Marshal Sean Bell as long-range cluster bomb-carrying Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) have been promised to the Kiev regime by the Biden administration. Currently, there is no clarity as to how many of them will be delivered to Ukraine, nor when they will arrive, the military analyst underscored. Bell added that there were several reasons that gave Washington pause when it came to signing off on the weapons that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky had been clamoring for. One of these was that the ballistic missiles can be used at long distances, and if they target Russian territory there is a grave risk the situation could escalate.
Sean Bell added that there are no big war stocks of these ATACMs, as they are very expensive, high-tech weapons.
The White House reportedly gave a nod to the delivery of a limited batch of the surface-to-surface, inertially guided tactical ballistic missile manufactured by the US defense company Lockheed Martin to Ukraine earlier. The missiles boast a strike range of 190 miles (300 kilometers). ATACMS were widely used in both Operation Desert Storm (1991) and during the US invasion of Iraq.
Black Market Fears
Amid its botched counteroffensive, the Kiev regime has been waiting for the possible supply of ATACMS missiles in the hopes it could change the situation on the battlefield. However, Moscow has warned that it would result in further escalation. Delivery of the ATACMS was slammed as a “road to nowhere” by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov. Furthermore, the warning from British military expert Sean Bell in UK media has echoed concerns that have been reiterated since early 2022, when Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine.
Moscow warned that military aid being funneled to Kiev could somehow end up in the hands of European criminal groups. Authorities in Finland, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands eventually began reporting in the fall of 2022 and onward that “huge quantities” of weapons shipped from Ukraine were making their way into the EU. At the time, fears were voiced that, essentially, “virtually any type of weapon” sent to Ukraine might end up on the black market. Even as far as in the Sahel region of Africa, officials including now former Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said in late 2022 that Western arms destined to Ukraine were “beginning to filter” through to the Lake Chad basin, reaching local militant groups.
While American officials have publicly dismissed the proliferation threat, US media has reported that as little as “30 percent” of the West’s military aid to Ukraine to fuel NATO’s proxy war with Russia was actually reaching the front.
The West knows full well that the weapons they deliver to Ukraine are being sold on the black market, US investigative journalist Seymour “Sy” Hersh told Russian media earlier in the year. Hersh added that “very early, Poland, Romania, [and] other countries on the border were being flooded with weapons we’d been shipping for the war to Ukraine.”
“In other words, commanders of various […] levels – often they were generals or colonels and others – were given with shipments of some weapons [and] personally [they] re-sold or retailed them back to the black or dark market,” the Pulitzer Prize-winner stated.
