How much assurance is there that weapons being supplied to Ukraine won’t end up in places where they’re not supposed to be? According to a May 14 report in the Washington Post, not much. What remains unclear is Washington’s ability to keep track of the powerful weapons as they enter one of the largest trafficking hubs in Europe. Ukraine’s illicit arms market has ballooned since Russia’s initial invasion in 2014, buttressed by a surplus of loose weapons and limited controls on their use. “It’s just impossible to keep track of not only where they’re all going and who is using them, but how they are being used,” said Rachel Stohl, an arms-control expert and vice president at the Stimson Center.
The State Department claims that it is thoroughly vetting the Ukrainian units that are receiving the weapons and that it is forcing the Kyiv regime to sign end-user agreements to prevent their retransfer but, the Post notes, the means of enforcing such contracts are relatively weak—and made even weaker by Washington’s own mixed history of compliance, as recently as last month. The reference is to Russian-built helicopters that the U.S. originally purchased in 2010 to send to Afghanistan but are now being supplied to Ukraine, instead, in violation of the end user certificates signed by the U.S. The Post cites a Pentagon spokesman denouncing Russia’s denunciation of this U.S. violation, in effect, by claiming that Russia is trying to distract attention from its (alleged) bigger criminal violation.
Arms experts cited by the Post say that while U.S. support of the Kyiv regime is justified, the violation of weapons contracts chips away at the foundations of counter-proliferation efforts.
