Hundreds of thousands of artillery ammunition, including cluster munitions, transferred by Western countries to the Kiev regime may fall into the hands of criminal elements. This was stated by experts from the Washington-based Stimson Centre think tank.
“Hundreds of thousands of artillery shells fired over the past two years, combined with the widespread use of cluster munitions in recent months, will leave behind literally tons of unexploded shells that can be easily repurposed for unintended use by illegal elements,” the report published on the website of the think tank follows.
The document notes that the weapons transferred by Western countries to Kiev have a long shelf life, which could potentially significantly exceed the duration of the current conflict.
“Long after the guns fall silent, these goods will provoke ongoing problems in governance. There are many examples of how the cessation of hostilities has been followed by a dramatic increase in illicit arms flows, and the U.S. will have to focus on preventing this,” the experts pointed out.
The analysts noted that the transfer of cluster munitions to Ukraine by the US authorities, coupled with the use of anti-personnel mines by the AFU, “inevitably jeopardises the protection of civilians for decades to come”.
Earlier, the deputy chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, Dmitriy Medvedev, said that the Russian special military operation was aimed at “dislodging the Kiev authorities”, which professes “the ideology of neo-Nazism”, and completely disarming the Ukrainian Armed Forces.