Keeping American Weapons From Smugglers
In Ukraine, portable arms are being used almost as quickly as they are received. Ukrainian soldiers handling a Stinger weapon.
WARSAW — Rocket launchers, precision-guided missiles and billions of dollars’ worth of other advanced American weapons have given Ukraine a chance against Russia. But if even a few end up on the black market, a Ukrainian lawmaker predicted, “we’re done.”
The 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 stuff was left behind, and they came back to get it, and were killed,” she said of Ukrainian troops’ efforts to make sure weapons were not stolen or lost.
But in Washington, against a looming government debt crisis and skepticism about financial support for Ukraine, Congress is demanding tight accountability for “every weapon, every round of ammunition that we send to Ukraine,” as Representative Rob Wittman said last month.
By law, U.S. officials must monitor American weapons to make sure they are being deployed as intended. In December, for security reasons, the Biden administration largely shifted responsibility to Kyiv for monitoring the American weapons shipments at the front, despite Ukraine’s history of corruption and arms smuggling.
Yet the volume of arms delivered creates a challenge to tracking each item, officials and experts caution.
American 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 looking into reports of Javelin shoulder-fired rockets and Switchblade drones being sold online, according to an American official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
There was one confirmed report of a Swedish-made grenade launcher being smuggled out of Ukraine. The theft was discovered after the weapon exploded in the trunk of a car outside Moscow, injuring a retired Russian military officer who had just returned from Ukraine.
U.S. inspectors reported in March that they had “not yet substantiated significant waste, fraud or abuse” out of 189 complaints alleging misconduct.
The commander of NATO troops in Europe, General Christopher G. Cavoli, 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 being used almost as quickly as they are received. That makes handheld missile systems and other portable arms “vastly more difficult” to track, said Nikolai Sokov of the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation in Austria.
He cited unconfirmed reports of Stinger missiles “roaming Ukraine free,” and said officials appeared to be trying to persuade Ukrainian citizens to return light arms they received to defend themselves last year.
American and Ukrainian officials have described an assiduous but fallible process to track weapons.
Arms shipments stop at military staging centers in Europe, where the weapons’ serial numbers are recorded into databases that are viewed by American and Ukrainian officials. The serial numbers are rechecked along the delivery route into Ukraine. They are also used to identify weapons that have been lost and later reclaimed; arms that turn up far from Ukraine would indicate they were smuggled.
This past December, American officials began giving Ukrainian troops hand-held bar code scanners to instantly transmit the serial numbers of advanced weapons into an American database.
Ms. Ustinova said Ukrainian officials and troops were aware of the stiff criminal penalties not just for smuggling American weapons but also failing to report any arms destroyed or captured on the battlefield. Each lost weapon system is investigated and its serial number reported to the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, she said, “so in case it shows up, in Iran or somewhere, we’re not being accused of that.”
She said the 16-person committee she chairs has investigated news reports of Western arms that have supposedly turned up with gangs, terror groups and other criminals. But Ms. Ustinova echoed American assertions attributing the reports to Russian disinformation campaigns.
Yet the scrutiny is wearing on Ukrainian officials.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine revealed “a twinge of frustration” when the issue was raised last month by a U.S. delegation to Kyiv, said Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
But Mr. Zelensky agreed it is necessary, she said, to ensure continued American assistance.
“All it will take is a situation where we find that somebody, somewhere down the chain, has gotten a piece of military equipment and has sold it for personal enrichment, or misappropriated it in some way,” Ms. Murkowski said. “Because then it just gets that much harder.”