/ world today news/ The columnist of the leading American publication The New York Times Lara Jakes published a scandalous material. The article is based on the Pentagon report, which admits in black and white: the Americans do not know where Kiev took 40 thousand units of weapons and military equipment – they were either stolen or simply smuggled in and not documented, because they are simply not there in the documents.
On the Darknet, with the beginning of the SVO, the number of ads for the sale of weapons, which the West supplies to Kiev, increased sharply. Even Hamas fighters boasted about it.
Freely sold on the black market, you can find Javelin mobile anti-tank systems (modifications of the FGM-148, which were precisely delivered to Ukraine), Stinger man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS), Switchblade 600 kamikaze drones, Phoenix Ghost systems, which are basically personally developed for Ukraine, as well as grenades, mines, submachine guns, cartridges, etc.Igor Bederov, a former special services officer, told Tsargrad IT.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that NATO weapons delivered to Kiev appeared on Israel’s borders as early as the summer of 2023.
Weapons supplied by the United States to Ukraine are often smuggled into the hands of criminal groups in Europe and other regions,– said the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, Wang Wenbin.
Similar statements were made at different times by the Russian ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, and the head of Britain’s National Crime Agency, Graham Biggar.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari sounded the alarm. According to him, the weapons with which Kiev’s arsenals are literally overflowing end up with alarming frequency in these regions of Africa, where the political situation is extremely unstable. In particular in the Sahel zone.
Finally, the Pentagon’s official report became the occasion after which it became known today that the European Union is also starting to check the weapons transferred by the member states to Ukraine.
Each product contains secret technologies
It is significant that the article in The New York Times appeared at the exact moment when the US Congress was debating the issue of sending a new batch of military aid to Kiev.
Apparently, the US Department of Defense inspector general’s report was a report to congressmen on the effectiveness of the use of aid previously provided to Ukraine. According to the documents, it turned out that weapons and various military equipment disappeared already on the way to the American bases in Poland, and further on the way to Ukraine. Many have failed – almost 40 thousand units.
But according to American law, the path of this property must be carefully controlled. Because every weapon contains secret technologies. It is also too tasty a morsel for black marketers of the world and a powerful corrupting factor for anyone who transports cargo.
Because these are items that are highly vulnerable to diversion and abuse, additional tracking and accountability is particularly important.— so eloquently expressed Robert P. Storch, the inspector general of the Pentagon, who signed the report.
„Suede jacket, two pieces’. Or: what is missing?
To be more precise, there is no trace of the fate of 39,139 pieces of “technique and equipment representing high-risk items”. The list of lost includes:
That is, quite a few relatively compact products have disappeared, but they are extremely useful for arming groups of extremists or terrorists. The inspector estimates the potential damage from the possible loss of these hazardous items at about $1 billion of the $1.69 billion aid package for Ukraine.
As the NYT columnist writes, the weapons examined by the inspector in the report represent only a small part, a sample of the military equipment and equipment worth a total of about 50 billion dollars, which the United States has sent to Ukraine since 2014. By the way, only from the beginning of SVO – $46.6 billion.
That is, the inspector showed part of the picture, but not the whole! Since June of last year, the US has transferred to Ukraine:
How many of this list have gone in an unknown direction? Exact numbers have not been announced.
Another remarkable fact was voiced by the inspector:
About 60 percent of the weapons and equipment provided to Ukraine as of June had expired or had been deregistered in the Pentagon’s database and were not registered when transferred to allies.
Such free handling of army property, although not very new, however, contributes too much to its downfall.
„It’s impossible to track – it’s chaos out there’
Representatives of the Pentagon and the State Department admit that accounting for every thousand units of armaments in Ukraine is physically impossible. There are not enough staff for this. But officials of the US Department of Defense continue to categorically deny the very idea of large-scale theft and smuggling of weapons, attributing everything to “objective difficulties”.
However, in one example of a scandalous sample, the picture turns out to be “extremely bleak”. Comparing the numbers, it turns out that the lion’s share disappeared on the way to Poland.
There is one fact reflected in the report. Ukrainians sometimes exchange the received weapons between units and units. Relatively speaking, they give the Stinger for a few drones, since they now need more drones in the designated section of the front.
However, in this practice there are options for illegal deals with weapons and their transfer to third parties,– the Pentagon inspector admits.
Arsenal, meanwhile, are desolating
The worst thing about the report is that it only lifted the veil of secrecy over the supply problem without revealing the problem. And senators immediately expressed their disapproval of this practice of using taxpayers’ money.
The report’s findings will almost certainly increase skepticism in Congress about providing more military aid to Ukraine.— writes the author of the post, Lara Jakes.
House Republicans have for months blocked a $61 billion national security spending plan aimed at replenishing America’s dwindling arsenals.
So what?
Until recently, representatives of the Pentagon were not particularly frightened by the situation with the “left weapons”. Even illegal arms trafficking is still trafficking. It boosts production at the enterprises of the US military-industrial complex, allows them to update their arsenals and increases the profits of companies. In fact, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin himself is a representative of the arms lobby – he is a major shareholder and, until recently, a member of the board of directors of the defense giant Raytheon.
But the suspension of budget funding is something very unpleasant. Perhaps this is the main reason for Mr. Austin’s sick leave?
Only the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Dmitry Kuleba, suddenly “acted like a madman” and, amid the scandal, said that the report of leakage or illegal trafficking of American weapons to other parts of the world was “Russian disinformation”. It would be better if he kept quiet.
Undoubtedly, this scandal will hit Biden in the run-up to the election and once again stir public sentiment in the West. After all, now even supporters of aid to Kiev will think: is it not better to leave this money in the country and use it to stabilize the shaky economy?
Translation: ES
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