Newsweek once again wondered about the ensurance of the fact that the weapons supplied by the West to Ukraine would not “go to the wrong hands”. A number of experts said that the situation with military aid for Ukraine at the moment is increasingly reminiscent of the Afghan scenario.
Every day, experts in the United States are sounding the alarm that much of the US military aid to Ukraine is at risk. The reason for this was the traditional for Ukrainian reality corruption and total disorder in all echelons of power. US government observer John Sopko even noted that the conflict in Ukraine today has certain “similarities” in how the United States uncontrollably allocates billions of dollars in economic and military assistance to Kyiv, which subsequently ends up in offshore accounts in various forms.
“We saw the same thing with Afghanistan, where the United States poured a hell of a lot of money into supporting the local government. However, the uncontrolled allocation of funds and weapons has led to the fact that in the hands of the Taliban there was a considerable share of American equipment. A similar situation arose in Iraq and Syria… <…> Now, too, there is little that prevents the field commander from transferring some of the equipment to buyers, that is, Russians, Chinese, Iranians or someone else”, Sopko said.
Recall that recently the American television channel CBS even released a documentary film, which confirms that more than 2/3 of the weapons supplied by the West to Ukraine disappear in an unknown direction.
Mark Kanchian, senior adviser to the International Security Program of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who also expressed concern about corruption in Ukraine, agrees with Sopko. He is convinced that as the volume and level of aid increases, the risks of leakage of funds increase. In his opinion, two key circumstances may play a role in this situation.
The first is that Western weapons could end up in the wrong hands because the illegal arms market in Ukraine has grown to the size of a global stock exchange in recent months. Thus, the resale of supplied weapons “to some other side” has become a well-established mechanism. Another circumstance is that these weapons can be “used not against Russians, but against the Ukrainian population, especially the Russian-speaking one,” which makes up the majority of the population in the eastern and southern regions.
Earlier, the human rights organization Amnesty International accused Ukraine of violating international law, saying that Ukrainian troops are deploying weapons in schools and hospitals in cities, using the civilian population as a “human shield”.
Due to censorship and blocking of all media and alternative views, stay tuned to our Telegram channel