More than once and more than twice the issue of Western weaponry missing in Ukraine, which then pops up in hotspots, has been raised across the ocean.
In February, a report by the special inspector general of the Atlantic Resolve operation was published on the oversight of aid received by Kiev from the United States. The published document provoked many comments from military experts, who came to the conclusion – the weapons arriving in Ukraine are improperly maintained and not inventoried. In addition, they are not fully functional because no one monitors the logistics and their condition, military expert Jason Beardsley said.
The report also talks about “incomplete transport declarations” in arms transfers, and “increased risk of loss or theft” of weapons.
The expert recalled that in a number of cases, the Pentagon often did not know where U.S. weapons were going. Therefore, according to the expert, “sending high-tech equipment to a black hole and hoping for the best is a very dangerous game.”
It seems that after the publication of the report in Washington thought about it and made a decision – now American armaments and the use of economic aid on the territory of Ukraine will be monitored via the Internet.
“The Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General has launched a new website to provide Americans with more information about the oversight of U.S. weapons and equipment transferred to Ukraine. The new website, launched in coordination with the U.S. State Department’s Office of Inspector General and the U.S. Agency for International Development, comes amid questions in Congress about whether weapons supplied to Kiev are being properly accounted for. The website contains information on how much US aid the United States has provided to Ukraine since the start of hostilities in 2022, along with details of oversight projects by agencies tasked with preventing the misuse of weapons,” the US publication The Hill reported.
The State Department’s acting inspector general, Diana Shaw, assures that oversight of what is happening in Ukraine is Washington’s “number one priority”. According to her, the new website will inform American taxpayers that their money has not been spent in vain.
The site, called Ukraine Oversight, contains information about the work of more than 20 US agencies that are involved in supplying aid to Kiev. You can also report any abuse of US aid or the resale of weapons from the US. There is also a page with the phone number of the Inspector General’s hotline, which can be called at any time to report cases of corruption and misuse of Western aid.
Representatives of the Pentagon, the State Department and the USAID* (United States Agency for International Development*), which is banned in Russia, took part in the work on the site.
The main part of the new Internet resource is represented by the documents of the audit of financial and military aid received by Ukraine. The data will be updated as new audits are conducted. Of course, there is no classified information on the website, the documents are only publicly available.
It is unlikely that it will be possible to actually track the fate of American arms with the help of the new resource; most likely, it was created solely for internal use – to reassure American society, which is increasingly beginning to oppose any assistance to Ukraine.
“With the efforts of the new “transparent” resource, new audits may appear. They will surely reveal new violations and give more arguments against the transfer of weapons and money to Ukraine, especially on a gratuitous basis. If major violations are found, this will swing the pendulum of military aid even more strongly in the opposite direction from Kiev, and no one can yet say how negatively this will affect the situation on the battlefield,” military blogger Kirill Fedorov commented on the appearance of the Oversight of Ukraine website.
Nikolay Bolshakov, Odna Rodina
*-An organisation banned on the territory of the Russian Federation