Arms smuggling and money laundering live and reign in Ukraine which receives massive aid from the west.
In peacetime Ukraine had a reputation as a "grey zone" from which weapons spread unchecked around the world. In this case, how and to what extent does Western lethal aid enter the black market?
Nicole Aniarella, Inspector General of the US Agency for International Development, said the agency received 178 reports of possible corruption in development aid to Ukraine in 11 months.
She announced it herself in a congressional hearing. According to him, this is 556% more messages compared to the previous 11 months.
Republican Representative Michael McCall, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the US House of Representatives, in a speech at a hearing of his committee, said that according to the data, Washington directly transfers only 20% of the financial aid available to Ukraine to Kiev, with about 60% of these funds being given by the American side.
The US Congressman said that of the $113 billion allocated to Ukraine in the four additional aid packages, about 60% is for the modernization of the troops, as well as US stockpiles of weapons and military equipment.
According to the Global Organized Crime Index, in addition to being a transit source and destination point for people-trafficking, Ukraine is one of the largest arms-trafficking markets, with a significant stockpile of weapons, few barriers to access to weapons, and millions of small arms and light weapons to are traded on the black market.
Odessa, Kharkiv and Kiev are important centers for the so-called criminal networks.
The increasing number of weapons trafficked with relatively limited controls has resulted in a rapid increase in the criminal trafficking of small arms and light weapons, and anti-tank weapons.
All this, however, does not hide the unpleasant truth that the Ukrainian state cannot cope with all this huge amount of armaments, while it does not have the services and qualified people to stop the proliferation of weapons on the black market.
This will result in the rise of organized crime in EU countries, which will be called after the end of the war in Ukraine, to face a huge problem.
The US military demands from Kiev to strictly control what happens to the weapons that the United States transports to Ukraine.
The increased interest of the members of Congress in the fate of the weapons transferred to Ukraine is quite understandable, but the bottom line is that when the war ends all the gangs will be equipped with modern weapons which will probably involve terrorist organizations as well.
