WARSAW — Rocket launchers, precision-guided missiles and billions of dollars in other advanced American weapons have given Ukraine a chance against Russia. But if just a few end up on the black market, one Ukrainian lawmaker predicted, “we are doomed.”
Lawmaker Oleksandra Ustinova, a former anti-corruption activist who now monitors foreign arms transfers, does not believe there is widespread smuggling of the most sophisticated weapons.
“We’ve literally had people die because they left things behind, and they came back to get them, and they were killed,” he said of Ukrainian troops’ efforts to make sure weapons weren’t stolen or lost.
But in Washington, faced with a looming government debt crisis and skepticism over financial support for Ukraine, Congress demands strict accountability for “every gun, every round of ammunition we send to Ukraine” as the disputed Rob Wittman said in April.
By law, U.S. officials must monitor American weapons to ensure they are being deployed as intended. In December, for security reasons, The Biden Administration largely transferred responsibility for monitoring US arms shipments to the front lines to Kiev, despite Ukraine’s history of corruption and arms smuggling.
However, the volume of weapons delivered creates a challenge in tracking each item, officials and experts warn.
U.S. officials said there have been a small number of cases of suspected arms trafficking or other illicit military transfers of advanced weapons.
U.S. investigators are verifying reports of online sales of Javelin shoulder rockets and Switchblade drones, a U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
There was a confirmed report of a Swedish-made grenade launcher being smuggled out of Ukraine. The theft was discovered after the gun exploded in the trunk of a car on the outskirts of Moscow, wounding a retired Russian military officer who had just returned from Ukraine.
Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, commander of NATO troops in Europe, told Congress last month that he could recall only one case of attempted smuggling, of automatic rifles, since the war began.
But the threat remains. Weapons are used almost as quickly as they are received. That makes hand-held missile systems and other man-portable weapons “much more difficult” to track.said Nikolai Sokov of the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Nonproliferation in Austria.
U.S. and Ukrainian officials have described an assiduous but fallible process for tracking weapons.
Weapons shipments arrive at military centers in Europe, where the weapons’ serial numbers are recorded in databases viewed by U.S. and Ukrainian officials. Serial numbers are re-verified along the delivery route to Ukraine. They are also used to identify weapons that have been lost and later recovered.
In December, U.S. officials began giving Ukrainian troops portable barcode scanners to instantly transmit the serial numbers of advanced weapons to a U.S. database.
Ustinova said Ukrainian officials and troops were aware of severe criminal penalties not only for smuggling American weapons, but also for failing to report weapons destroyed or captured on the battlefield. Each lost weapons system is investigated and its serial number is reported to the American Embassy in kyiv, she said, “so that if it appears in Iran or somewhere else, we will not be accused of it”.
She said the 16-person committee she chairs has investigated news reports about Western weapons that have allegedly appeared with gangs, terrorist groups and other criminals.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky revealed “a pang of frustration” when a U.S. delegation raised the issue last month in kyiv, said Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
But Zelensky agreed that it is necessary, he said, to ensure continued American assistance.
“All it takes is a situation where we find that someone, somewhere along the chain, obtained a piece of military equipment and sold it for personal enrichment, or misappropriated it in some way,” Murkowski said. “Because then it becomes a lot more difficult.”
*Thomas Gibbons-Neff contributed reporting.
LARA JAKES. THE NEW YORK TIMES
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6718053, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-05-17 22:40:08
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