Confirming the presence of the US troops in Ukraine, the Pentagon has drawn up a three-stage action plan on blocking the illegal arms trafficking in Eastern Europe. The US inspection network does not only include Ukraine, but also other countries neighboring Ukraine or its neighbors across the sea. While the names of the countries included in this network to be established not mentioned, the reality that an illegal arms market similar to that in the Middle East and the Balkans, are being implicitly admitted.
According to an official statement by the US Department of Defense (Pentagon) regarding the activities of the deployed US troops in Ukraine, military advisors from the US military will conduct arms inspections in Ukraine. And the main subject of the inspection is summarized as; the final destination of the US/Western arms supplies. It will be inspected whether these high-tech conventional weapons are properly used at the front. And the most important part would be to ensure that these arms would not fall into the hands of the Russians, and to “prevent” the rise of an illegal arms market.
The Pentagon held a press conference with journalists on the issue on October 31st but refrained to share any information on the number of specialists deployed in Ukraine or the locations they will serve. These inspectors “are not to be deployed in close combat zones” the officials said.
Thus, this statement officially confirmed the presence and the activities of the US military in Ukraine, apart from the military personnel protecting the US diplomats in Kiev. The Pentagon had evacuated all US troops from the country on February 14th, exactly 10 days before the conflict began.
Pentagon: There is suspicion, but no evidence
The Pentagon officials also said they did not see “any solid evidence” of illicit diversion of the US arms supplies sent to Ukraine, while adding, “Nevertheless, we are aware of the possibility of an illicit arms diversion. We are actively taking all available actions to prevent such a thing from happening.”
And the Republican criticisms on the destination of arms sent to Ukraine, also had a major impact, while the case was upon an investigation process. The Minority (Republican) leader in the House of Representatives Kevin McCarty, said in a speech he made in October that Republicans would not hand a “blank check” to Ukraine.
The Tweet McCarty has pinned on his Twitter account on October 8th, is about the Biden family’s relationship with the Ukrainian government:
“Fact: Joe Biden’s family members profited in foreign regions where he had influence as vice president. Hunter Biden sat on the board of a Ukrainian company in an industry in which he had no experience. His only qualification was that his father ran point on US-Ukraine policy.”
Admitting the existence of an arms black market
It is very possible to say that the arms sent to Ukraine could be sold on the black market, and that more “black markets” could emerge where terror groups can acquire advanced weapons, based on some similar experiences in the Middle East. Some of these risks are clearly explained in the “US Plan to Counter Illicit Diversion of Certain Advanced Conventional Weapons in Eastern Europe” issued by the US Department of Defense on October 27th:
“Wars can provide opportunities for weapons to fall into private hands via theft or illicit sales, sometimes creating black markets for arms that endure for decades. A variety of criminal and non-state actors may attempt to acquire weapons from sources in Ukraine during or following the conflict, as occurred after the Balkans Wars in the 1990s.”
According to the Pentagon plan, some special precautions must be taken especially on small arms, MANPADs and anti-tank missiles. It is quite possible that such weapons could be used in terrorist attacks targeting civilian aircrafts.
The Pentagon’s preventive “capacity building” plan for Eastern Europe
Reading the Biden administration’s deployment of military advisors and inspectors to Ukraine only as a response to the criticisms from the Republicans and from Russia, is not sufficient enough to fully explain the overall approach of the US government. The Pentagon considers that if the arms thatare described in the plan document fall into the hands of the Russian military, Moscow may use it to “develop countermeasures, spread propaganda or conduct false flag operations.”
The plan to prevent arms diversion is not only limited to Ukraine, according to the Pentagon’s program. The “action plan” covers three phases: short, medium and long-term, and the construction of a wide network of inspection all across Eastern Europe:
- “Bolstering the ability of security forces in Ukraine and its neighboring states to account for and safeguard their arms and ammunition during transfer, in storage, and when deployed;
- Strengthening border management and security in Ukraine and its neighboring states; and
- Building the capacity of security forces, law enforcement officials, and border control agencies in Ukraine and its neighboring states to deter, detect, and interdict illicit trafficking of certain advanced conventional weapons.”
According to the plan put up in the document, the coordination mechanisms are defined as “Building the capacity of law enforcement officials and analysts in Ukraine and neighboring states to process and share information regarding interdicted or captured weapons”.
“Azov battalions could get out of control”
The Europol agency also warned last summer about the illegal diversion of arms in Ukraine across Europe. On October 27th the EU Commission tasked on the issue, also drafted a new law on the increasing allegations of arms trafficking over the Ukrainian war. The commission noted that the Ukrainian war constitutes a new source for illicit arms trafficking in Europe.
The figures also show the extent of this threat. Since last February, the Pentagon has sent around 10 thousand weapons including missile launchers, and around 64 million ammunitions for small arms to Ukraine.
According to a 2020 Pentagon report, the US has increased its military aid to Kiev to 400 million USD in 2019, from 30 million USD back in 2013. And the total amount of the military supply the Pentagon has sent to Kiev in the last eight months alone has reached 18 billion USD.
Experts consider a military aid of this magnitude to fall into the black market and into the hands of dangerous organizations, as within possibilities.
The US think-tank Responsible Statcraft, points out to the possibility of the course of the war in Ukraine to turn towards strengthening the radical groups, which can form independent paramilitaries with the help of these weapons. According to Jordan Cohen from the Cato Institute, it may get much more difficult for Volodymyr Zelensky to control organizations such as the Azov battalions in the future. Cohen describes the danger by saying, “If he loses control of those groups, then I think you are going to start seeing those groups kind of creating their own military units, and that is dangerous”.
The arms market of Bandidos in Ukraine
Founded in 1966 in Saint Leon TX, the Bandidos Motorcycle Club has a wide network of organizations around the world. This criminal organization is among the leading actors in the transportation of commodities of the arms black market into European heartland. At the end of October, Finnish National Bureau of Investigation announced that weapons of Western origin sent to Ukraine, may have reached the black markets in Finland, through criminal organizations such as the Bandidos. Speaking to Finnish publication Yle, Chief Inspector Christer Ahlgren stated: “Weapons delivered to Ukraine from various countries have also been found in Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands”. According to Inspector Ahlgren, there are strong indications that these weapons are on their way to Finland.
Inspector Ahlgren says this black market is run by bike gangs:
“The three largest bike gangs in the world, which are all part of a wider international network, are all active in Finland. One of them is the Bandidos Motorcycle Club, which has cells in all major cities of Ukraine”.
Here, a huge gap is opening between Russia and the European Union, as Texan Bandidos and similar criminal organizations and US military inspectors play cat and mouse over Ukrainian soil.
