Nearly 40,000 weapons and other military aid worth more than $1 billion sent by the United States to Ukraine were not adequately monitored and may have ended up, in part, on the black market. The complaint comes from a new report published yesterday by the Inspector General of the Department of Defense (which features several omissions), according to which American officials and diplomats in Washington and Europe “were unable to fully account” for more than 59 percent of the 1, $69 billion in military items supplied by the US to Kiev between October 2022 and February 2023.
The document in no way proves (or disproves) that these weapons were smuggled on the black market after being sent to Ukraine via a US military base in Poland. “It was beyond the scope of our evaluation to determine whether there was a diversion of such care,” the report said. However, the text continues, “high rates of negligence may be related to the inability to maintain complete traceability of defense supplies, which, in turn, may increase the risk of theft or diversion” of these assets.
In short, it cannot be ruled out that some of the weapons intended to help Ukraine counter the Russian invasion ended up in other hands. This is because the Pentagon itself admits that, at least as regards the aid sent in the period considered, there was not the careful monitoring required by law for this type of sensitive technology.
The US Department of Defense has argued that dangerous combat conditions on the ground prevent US officials from going to the front lines to ensure weapons are used as intended, and the lack of sufficient competent personnel at the US embassy. in Kiev.
The weapons examined in the report, presented yesterday without omission to Congress, constitute only a small part of the almost 50 billion dollars in military aid provided by the US to Kiev but it still amounts to 39,139 defense materials and articles with a total value of 1. 69 billion dollars. Potential losses, the report estimates, exceed 59 percent, at around $1 billion.
According to the calculations by the Council on Foreign Relations, as of December 2023, the United States had provided more than $46.3 billion in military aid to Ukraine. For the New York Timeswhose estimates stopped last June, these are at least 10 thousand Javelin anti-tank rockets, 2,500 Stinger surface-to-air missiles, 750 Switchblade kamikaze drones, 430 medium-range air-to-air missiles and 23 thousand night vision devices. But some of these may have ended up on the black market, fueling other wars.
#Pentagon #Military #aid #Ukraine #poorly #monitored #billion #dollars #worth #weapons #missing
