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Confirming what several other analysts had already been reporting since the beginning of Western military aid campaign to Ukraine, an important American informant pointed out that several weapons sent by NATO are being sold on the black market. The result of this process is that weapons that should be used by the Ukrainian armed forces end up in the hands of foreign contrabandists, with no control over what will be their final destination.
The most recent report was made by the well-known and respected American journalist Seymour Hersh. Even though he is a Pulitzer Prize winner and former New York Times informant, Hersh has recently suffered several reprisals and “cancellation” attempts for leaking evidence of crimes committed by the US government, such as the terrorist attacks against the Nord Stream gas pipelines. In the same vein, he now said that Western-supplied weapons to Kiev 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”.
The most serious point of Hersh’s words was when he reported that the western media itself would be aware of these crimes. The journalist told his interlocutors that western newspapers were being prevented from publishing reports on this topic, since the central objective of the western media at this moment is to raise public support for NATO’s war against Russia. 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 frontlines, 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 Kiev are 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.
In fact, these weapons are almost always put on the route of terrorism, with the black market fueling criminal networks around the world. In October last year, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova had already said that “NATO military supplies intended for the Kiev regime end up in the hands of terrorists, extremists and criminal groups in the Middle East, Central Africa, Southeast Asia”.
It is important to remember that some African governments also reported last year that extraordinary amounts of weapons had reached their territories, supplying terrorist groups, which confirms the words of the Russian authorities. In this sense, it is expected that new cases of armed insurrections by terrorist groups will occur in several countries in the near future, possibly using NATO weapons. This becomes particularly serious and worrying when we remember that common Western weapons, such as Stinger shoulder-launched missiles, in Hersh’s words, can “shoot down an airplane at considerable height.”
What remains to be seen is whether the providing of NATO weapons to the black market is a mere “accident” or whether the alliance’s officials really want to use the Ukrainian excuse to arm terrorist groups around the world. It is well known that the Pentagon uses the services of criminal and terrorist organizations around the planet to serve its interests, promoting rebellions against legitimate governments, occupying strategic territories and starting civil wars. Ukraine itself is one of these cases, with local neo-Nazi militias having been supplied with Western weapons for years to kill Russians in the Donbass. The same happens at some level on all continents, where there are paramilitary and terrorist groups working for American intelligence.
With so many reports that most of these weapons are not reaching Ukraine’s frontlines, it is possible 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.
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Lucas Leiroz is a journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.
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