NOURNEWS- The president of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari said that weapons from the raging war between Russia and Ukraine are now slipping into the Lake Chad Basin region. He continued and said: the Russia/Ukraine conflict and other violent situations in the Sahel region of West Africa had compounded the Boko Haram terrorism in the Lake Chad Basin region.
He said: though a lot had been done to decimate the strength of the Boko Haram terror group and other violent extremist groups in the region, terrorist threats still persist.
The main question is; why there are weapons from Ukraine in Africa, West Asia and other regions of the world?
Even western countries supplying weapons to Ukraine are seriously concerned about such cases. Reselling weapons abroad to Europe (Sweden, Poland and Romania) and Africa is becoming a common practice in Ukraine.
While the US and its allies are enthusiastically looking for strengthening and supporting Volodymyr Zelensky’s war against Russia, weapons and military hardware worth billions of dollars are continuing to flood black markets in Ukraine and are leaking into other parts of the world. Since the start of the Ukraine war, shipments of weapons from the West have drastically intensified, although the Pentagon has recently admitted that a large volume of the military aid has vanished.
The US officials claim they are unable to audit Ukraine-bound weapons once they leave Poland. But Washington is unwilling to disclose a dangerous fact, Zelensky, the president of Ukraine himself is directly involved in selling weapons in the transnational black market, while in Kyiv, people are also talking about secret financial links between the president of Ukraine and the members of the Biden Family, including Hunter Biden. Policymakers in Washington think, if the matter of disappearance of weapons and Western aid to Ukraine is investigated, it would result in “huge embarrassment” to Joe Biden and some of his top-aides.
According to media reports, as late as December 2022, top Western officials have complained about this, including the Pentagon’s Deputy Inspector General for Investigations James R. Ives, who admitted that the US is aware of the lack of effective mechanisms to track Ukraine-bound NATO weapons. Several major US media have called for the Biden administration to send investigators to audit and oversee the use of more than US$110 billion in US military and economic “aid” to the Kyiv regime.
A large segment (more than 60 percent) of the weaponry sent to Kyiv by the Western countries is ending up in Africa and the Middle East, through transnational smuggling rackets. It may be mentioned here that corruption is endemic in Ukraine, but ever since the NATO-backed coup in 2014, it has worsened dramatically as the political West started showering the already crooked politicians and bureaucrats with tens of billions of dollars. Everyone from the managers of military warehouses, company and battalion commanders, top military officers, directors of the Kyiv regime’s military-industrial complex to the defense minister himself, are engaged in essentially stealing NATO-sourced weapons and then reselling them on the Darknet. The list of those involved also includes the office of the president, the cabinet of ministers, security services and military intelligence.
Until recent years, the massive stocks of Soviet-era weapons in Ukraine were the main source of smuggled weapons. However, despite inheriting approximately 30 percent of the Soviet military, Ukraine somehow managed to expend most of it, much of it ends up on the black markets around the globe. The political West was aware of this, as NATO had a major role in reselling the weapons to terrorist groups, they support in many of the targeted countries. And yet, they still went ahead and provided tens of billions in Western weapons and munitions to the same people smuggling their own for decades.
Media reports claimed there is even fierce competition among Kyiv regime institutions for the right to control the extremely profitable arms smuggling business. This includes various intelligence services, such as the SBU and GUR. The latter is the main military intelligence agency which is supposed to play a major role in overseeing the transfer and distribution of NATO weapons. Thus, GUR has a substantial head-start in the arms smuggling scheme, which is causing a lot of envy and frustration in the SBU. Since August 2020, Kirill Budanov has been the head of GUR, its worth to mention that he is a close ally of Volodymyr Zelensky.
It is worth noting that the fact that the SBU and the GUR are “supervised” by various NATO intelligence services also played a major role in the conflict between the agencies. For instance, the SBU is largely controlled by UK intelligence, primarily the infamous MI6. On the other hand, the GUR has been deeply connected to US services. The looming rivalry erupted after the political West intensified its arms shipments. In July 2022, the German SWR TV channel reported that Europol had identified “signs” of organized arms smuggling in Ukraine, but gave no further details in order not to incriminate the Kyiv regime.
The most recent report in regards to this infamous situation, was made by the well-known and respected American journalist Seymour Hersh. He said that Western-supplied weapons to Kyiv were actually "flooding" the military black market in countries like Romania and Poland. “Poland, Romania, other countries on the border were being flooded with weapons we [the US and allies] were shipping for the war to Ukraine (...) Often, it wasn’t generals, it was colonels and others, who were given shipments of some weapons, [who] would personally resell them (…) to the dark market", he said during a recent show of his journalistic program "Going Underground".
Hersh commented that, in a recent documentary called "Arming Ukraine", the CBS team would be about to publicize all the crimes of corruption involving NATO’s weapons, however the authors were forced to rewrite the words to be spoken during the video. Hersh also tells that the contained an interview with Jonas Ohman, founder of an important pro-Ukrainian NGO. Ohamn told journalists at the time that only 30% of Western military aid was reaching the front lines, suggesting that there was a wide network of corruption surrounding these weapons. However, the group responsible for the promotion of the film removed Ohman's speech. According to Hersh, CBS’ leaders explained to the documentary's producers that this type of content could not be shown because "we’re on the side of Ukraine. We all hate Russia.”
Indeed, Hersh's words only confirm what has been said by Russian officials since last year. A large amount of the arms sent to Kyiv is leaked to serve the interests of criminal networks, which profit from illegal military trade at exorbitant prices. However, the main problem was not even mentioned by Hersh: the real destination of these weapons, which goes far beyond illegal groups in Poland and Romania.
With so many reports that most of these weapons are not reaching Ukraine’s Frontlines, and so many censorships over the real situation in Ukraine by Western media Empire of lies in an attempt to protect the West and Ukraine’s government that it is certain that there really is a deliberate intention on the part of NATO’s intelligence to promote a global strengthening of criminal groups considered "allies". This will allow Washington to maintain strong proxies in other regions of the planet, despite the imminent defeat on Ukrainian soil. This is something to be investigated in depth.
BY: Pooya Mirzaei
NOURNEWS