Miscellaneous News
- Thread starter bd popeye
- Start date
Mercenaries? Yikes.
EU states sound alarm over Ukraine weapons smuggling
Nato and EU members call for greater tracking of arms to curb re-export to Europe’s black marketNato and EU states are pushing for better tracking of weapons they have supplied to Ukraine in response to fears that criminal groups are smuggling them back out of the country and on to Europe’s black market.
Since Russia launched its , western states have pledged more than $10bn in military support, from portable rocket launchers and armoured vehicles to rifles and vast amounts of ammunition.
“All these weapons land in southern Poland, get shipped to the border and then are just divided up into vehicles to cross: trucks, vans, sometimes private cars,” said one of the western officials. “And from that moment we go blank on their location and we have no idea where they go, where they are used or even if they stay in the country.”
“It’s hard to avoid trafficking or smuggling — we didn’t achieve it in former Yugoslavia and probably won’t avoid it in Ukraine,” Jana Černochová, the Czech defence minister, told reporters in Prague on Friday. She said she trusted that donor countries were taking all necessary steps to track weaponry but warned that it would not be possible to follow every item.
Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency, said in April that its investigations indicated that weapons trafficking from Ukraine into the bloc to supply organised crime groups had begun and was a potential threat to EU security.
“Initially, Ukrainian officials maintained registers of firearms handed out to civilians, but this practice was abandoned as the war progressed and firearms have been distributed without records since then,” it said, calling for “a register of weapons and other military materials transferred from the EU to Ukraine” to help law enforcement agencies track them.
“Information that Ukraine is becoming a major hub for arms smuggling does not correspond to reality,” said Yuriy Sak, an adviser to Ukraine’s defence minister, suggesting that those claiming such “could be part of Russia’s information war to discourage international partners from providing Ukraine with weaponry that is necessary for our victory”.
How is EDF reactor long term reliability in China?. these things need to be reliable over long term. The Ukranian largest plant is now 45 year old.
EU states sound alarm over Ukraine weapons smuggling
Nato and EU members call for greater tracking of arms to curb re-export to Europe’s black market
Nato and EU states are pushing for better tracking of weapons they have supplied to Ukraine in response to fears that criminal groups are smuggling them back out of the country and on to Europe’s black market.
Since Russia launched its , western states have pledged more than $10bn in military support, from portable rocket launchers and armoured vehicles to rifles and vast amounts of ammunition.
“All these weapons land in southern Poland, get shipped to the border and then are just divided up into vehicles to cross: trucks, vans, sometimes private cars,” said one of the western officials. “And from that moment we go blank on their location and we have no idea where they go, where they are used or even if they stay in the country.”
“It’s hard to avoid trafficking or smuggling — we didn’t achieve it in former Yugoslavia and probably won’t avoid it in Ukraine,” Jana Černochová, the Czech defence minister, told reporters in Prague on Friday. She said she trusted that donor countries were taking all necessary steps to track weaponry but warned that it would not be possible to follow every item.
Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency, said in April that its investigations indicated that weapons trafficking from Ukraine into the bloc to supply organised crime groups had begun and was a potential threat to EU security.
“Initially, Ukrainian officials maintained registers of firearms handed out to civilians, but this practice was abandoned as the war progressed and firearms have been distributed without records since then,” it said, calling for “a register of weapons and other military materials transferred from the EU to Ukraine” to help law enforcement agencies track them.
“Information that Ukraine is becoming a major hub for arms smuggling does not correspond to reality,” said Yuriy Sak, an adviser to Ukraine’s defence minister, suggesting that those claiming such “could be part of Russia’s information war to discourage international partners from providing Ukraine with weaponry that is necessary for our victory”.
Yikes, the stakes just went up. Now it's Jihadists vs. Neo-Nazis, but with Switchblade, Javelins, NLOS, stingers, and maybe a few HIMARS thrown in!
I do wonder if we will see political assassinations specifically in the West from jihadist groups. Some extremist using a javelin on a major western leader will shake the world to their core over these black market weapons.