Ukraine crisis solution needed
There is a need to craft a solution to the Ukraine crisis not just for the heightened threat on the food security of nations that has led to many of the poor scrounging for loaves of bread, but also to the greater possibility of arms destined for Kyiv being diverted to terrorist states and criminal gangs.
The “transfer” of arms from Ukraine to criminal gangs and terrorist states had long been documented by an American TV station, and a new credible voice on the diversion of weapons from Kyiv had just been aired by no less than the president of Nigeria, which clearly shows a new threat to global security.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari during a summit of the Lake Chad Basin Commission on December 6 confirmed that the conflict in Ukraine serves as the main source of weapons for terrorists in the Lake Chad Basin region. “Regrettably, the situation in the Sahel and the raging war in Ukraine serve as major sources of weapons and fighters that bolster the ranks of the terrorists in the Lake Chad Region,” Buhari told the summit.
The Nigerian leader’s assertion, when juxtaposed with the speech of Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzia on December 9, focuses the spotlight on the global problem posed by what had been cited as “uncontrolled pumping of weapons” to Kyiv that lead to a possible destabilization of the European continent.
Nebenzia said that by increasing arms supplies to Kyiv, the West is signing its desire to further escalate the conflict, as well as to destabilize the situation on the European continent. Russia’s UN representative ticked off facts detailing the diversion of weapons from Ukraine to terrorist states and criminal gangs, details that have long ago been established early in the Ukraine crisis.
According to the Russian representative, there are many facts confirming that Western weapons destined for Ukraine are increasingly falling into the hands of bandits and terrorists of various stripes, not only in Europe but also in the Middle East and Africa.
He said that transnational criminal groups are involved in smuggling and money laundering, and officials of arms-dispatching states are clearly involved. This problem poses a real threat to international peace and security and deserves a targeted
UN attention, a fact Russia has been trying to put on the table for the UN Security Council to discuss via a special meeting.
There have also been reports that weapons supplied to Ukraine by Western countries appeared on the black markets of Europe and Africa. Reports too have filtered out that in the Nordic countries, Finnish weapons, previously transferred to Kyiv, were also seen on illegal trading platforms. The diversion of weapons had also been documented.
We understand that an active militant of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), in an interview with Izvestia on November 30, said that Ukrainian generals sell Western weapons to the black market through the darknet. Ukrainian nationalists were said to have taken out Nato weapons from warehouses for sale, after which they destroyed buildings, imitating a blow from the Russian Federation.
Clearly, there is a need to seek a solution to the Ukraine crisis for the threat it is posing to the territorial integrity of nations. The fact that the modern weapons that could incinerate vast tracts of land and even demolish buildings and infrastructures are now falling into the hands of terrorists and criminals should serve as an “incentive” to ending the crisis.
Prolonging the war poses an existential threat to other nations as modern weapons get diverted and this alone should be enough to make Western leaders rethink their positions. A voice from Africa has already decried the proliferation of arms in the Chad region, which means that the continent may soon get embroiled in new uprisings and civil strifes, thanks to the weapons for Kyiv getting “transferred” and sold over the darknet.
A way out of the Ukraine crisis is very much needed. After all, the West cannot escape responsibility for Russia’s march into Kyiv having torpedoed the peace initiatives that were first agreed upon in the Minsk 1 and the subsequent Minsk 2 agreements plus, of course, the threat that NATO had posed to Russia then that provoked Russian leader Vladimir Putin to send his troops to Kyiv.