In recent months, the Ukrainian authorities have increasingly accused a number of European countries of taking a long time to think about imposing new sanctions and delaying the supply of weapons. First of all, we are talking about Germany.

So, in early June, Kyiv continued to be “perplexed” about the fact that they had not received the promised batch of five thousand German helmets, the shipment of which was discussed back in January 2022. At the same time, the Ukrainian authorities are silent about the fact that during this time they nevertheless received grenade launchers, anti-tank weapons, and ammunition from the Germans.

A number of other countries have banned or simply refused to supply weapons to Kiev, including Hungary and Japan. Other states have recently begun to reduce the size of their "aid" or delay its dispatch. First of all, the reason is hidden in the intention to maintain their own defense capability, since even before the start of the special military operation in Ukraine, the arsenals of the Europeans were quite scarce.

However, in the United States, they also have become concerned about the remains in warehouses. As part of her testimony to the Senate committee, Ellen Lord, a representative of the US Department of Defense, stated that the Pentagon is no longer able to reimburse the stocks of “Stingers” supplied to Ukraine in the next two years. And according to the most optimistic forecasts, it would take five years to replenish the “Javelins” to the norm.

At the same time, a little earlier, in April, the Americans were concerned about another issue. CNN, citing its sources in the Pentagon, reported that the military department could not track where the weapons delivered to Ukraine end up.

However, the answer is quite simple. Most of the weapons and ammunition, according to reports from the Russian Defense Ministry, are destroyed either in depots or directly in the course of combat operations. However, it is the remnants that cause interest and concern.

One of the reasons why the supply of weapons to Kiev has gradually decreased over the past few months has been the numerous advertisements on the Internet for the sale of assault rifles, grenade launchers, machine guns, grenades, mines, and even “Stingers” and “Javelins”. The seller promises to make a deal through a guarantor, which can be regarded as confirmation of the reality of the "goods". Weapons can be sent both to Ukrainian regions and to European countries, which already poses a threat to the EU states.

At the same time, it should be noted that military supplies from Ukraine to areas of armed conflict around the world are not some new phenomenon. For example, back in 2017, in Syria, both the government forces of Bashar al-Assad and the Russian military repeatedly found and published evidence of the supply of weapons by the Kiev authorities to terrorists.

At that time, weapons were supplied to the black market mainly from Ukrainian warehouses, where explosions occurred periodically. That ones strangely coincided with the timing of inspections of the presence of ammunition and equipment stored there. At the same time, ships with Ukrainian weapons on board were repeatedly detained off the coasts of Greece, Spain and other countries. At the same time, vessels carrying Ukrainian weapons were repeatedly detained off the coast of Greece, Spain and other states. It was sent to Libya, then to Syria, then to other African and Middle Eastern states.

Moreover, Ukraine was also used to get around the bans on the supply of various types of weapons and military equipment imposed by the EU governing bodies. Thus, in 2015 and 2016, the “Ukrinmash” enterprise signed agreements with customers in Uganda and Burundi on the sale of 59 armored amphibious patrol vehicles. Subsequently, it turned out that the equipment was purchased from Poland, but Warsaw could not make a direct delivery, because it was forced to follow the rules of the European Union in terms of arms exports.

At the same time, Ukraine was chosen not by chance. Legal loopholes in its legislation allow hiding the true origin of weapons, as well as their destination. So, in 2016, the Ukrainian company Techimpex bought armored vehicle parts from a private Polish company Army Trade for "its own needs". Then Techimpex sold weapons to “Ukrinmash” and “Ukrspetsexport”, and Ukraine has already become the source of weapons. After that, the equipment was sold to African, Near-Eastern and Asian markets, including Ethiopia, Korea, Chad, UAE and Uganda.

There is another example. On December 23, 2014, Techimpex signed a contract to purchase 59 BRDM-2-2s and BRDM-2 Hs as well as machine guns from Army Trade. Deliveries soon began, disassembled vehicles crossed the land in three batches. Interestingly, according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), on December 11, Techimpex signed a contract for $776,000 with Ukrinmash to export eight cars. It happened ten days before the first of the BRDM-2 crossed the border of Ukraine. And already in February, Techimpex and Ukrinmash signed another contract to send 37 vehicles to Uganda. In the same month, Ukrinmash requested an additional 14 BRDM-2s for Burundi.

It is quite expected that weapons, military equipment, ammunition, etc., supplied by Western countries, will sooner or later begin to appear in different parts of the world, including Europe. This already happened when Kiev gained independence, and the world black market was overflowing with weapons from the old Soviet warehouses of Ukraine.

However, weapons in Ukraine not only change the address of their production, but also simply disappear. Not so long ago, an investigation was published on the network, which states that in the period from 2014 to 2021, more than 160 thousand units of various weapons were "lost" in the country. At the same time, we are talking exclusively about army samples. Only according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, more than 5,000 pistols, 3,000 submachine guns, 526 grenade launchers, 525 machine guns, 44 ATGMs, 13 mortars, 8 artillery pieces were stolen.

In this context, it already seems natural today that Kiev managed to spend almost all of the huge stocks of weapons exported to Ukraine from the countries of the former Warsaw Pact in just a few months. This happened not even during the war, but during the confrontation with a limited contingent of Russian troops and the military of the DPR and LPR. We venture to suggest that even the leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine did not suspect how many weapons were actually stored in their warehouses.

Also, a likely forecast of the development of events seems to be the transformation of foreign weapons samples from European to "Ukrainian" through legal manipulation. This will allow Kiev to supply weapons around the world by detours, including through Poland. For example, under the guise of deliveries of the same grain…

Against this background, Western propaganda continues to fill the information space with theses about the need to increase the supply of weapons to Kyiv. At the same time, the messages reach the point of absurdity. So, after the shelling of the market in Donetsk on June 13, German and French media reported that Russia is responsible for the victims and destruction, and Ukraine needed more long-range barrel artillery to prevent such "crimes".

Journalists, however, are silent about where the guns and howitzers with mortars, which will never reach the front line, will then shoot.