There is very little evidence that Western weapons supplied to Ukraine end up on the black market in Europe.
This is stated in a report by the think tank “Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime” (GI-TOC) in Switzerland.
These data refute the Russian narrative that a fifth of Western weapons supplied to Ukraine allegedly end up on the black market and are resold to terrorists and rebel groups.
“We found no evidence that Western weapons destined for Ukraine have reached Western Europe, and there is very little evidence of any Western arms transactions in Ukraine,” said Daniel Brombacher, director of the European observatory GI-TOC.
“The weapons supplied by the West are in safe hands,” he added.
The organization's analysis is based on monitoring of the darknet and interviews with representatives of EU law enforcement agencies and the criminal world, focusing on the illegal markets of France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden.
The report also undermines the assumption that NATO military equipment is being supplied to European criminals.
The Spanish Civil Guard reported in May that hashish smugglers had fired on police with American and European-made rifles, and that NATO-standard ammunition had been found in previous raids. El Español claimed that Latin American drug cartels were sending representatives to Kyiv for bulk purchases. However, the GI-TOC found no evidence to support these claims, many of which have been denied.
In October 2022, a Finnish organized crime boss told the media that gangs were smuggling Western weapons destined for Ukraine to Finland, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands. This claim was denied by a police spokesman.
Further investigation by GI-TOC revealed that three Finnish crime bosses did indeed travel to Eastern Europe in mid-2022 “with the intention of bringing weapons, but were unable to do so due to a lack of the necessary organizational skills or access to financing,” Brombacher told the publication in an interview.
According to the report, the Ukrainian government is effectively preventing the illegal use of weapons by military personnel: only 250 cases were recorded in 2022, compared to 191 in 2021, a small number for a country that receives billions of dollars in military aid from the West.
