The cache was intercepted while reportedly being shipped to criminal groups in the country’s west
Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation (DBR) has announced the transfer of weapons worth about $100,000 confiscated from an alleged smuggling ring to the notorious Azov Corps.
The cache, including about 17,000 rounds of ammunition, grenades, single-shot anti-tank grenade launchers, land mines and other weapons, according to the Ukrainian agency, was handed over this week, having been seized in May.
A criminal group had used a humanitarian vehicle to transport the weapons stolen from the front line to Ivano-Frankivsk Region in Western Ukraine, the DBR has alleged.
The weapons were intended for sale on the black market, but will instead be used by Azov, the agency said, describing its members as “defenders of Ukraine.”
Azov originated as an ultranationalist Ukrainian volunteer militia amid the country’s bloody armed coup in 2014, before being incorporated into the country’s security forces. The unit has been widely accused of atrocities and war crimes by both Russia, which designated it a terrorist organization in 2022, and Western organizations, including the UN, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
Prior to the escalation of the conflict with Russia in 2022, US lawmakers had sought to restrict military assistance to the unit, citing its members’ far-right ideology. Western governments have since expanded their cooperation with the formation.
Moscow has for years warned that the Ukraine conflict would become a major source of illicit weapons for criminal groups and has alleged that elements within the Ukrainian state could be protecting trafficking networks.
Law enforcement agencies in several European countries have also warned about the risk that weapons from Ukraine could enter criminal markets.
Ukrainian organized crime tends to become joined at the hip with corrupt officials, as showcased earlier this month by the exposure of a protection racket operating in the prosecutor general’s office, which collected fees from scam-call centers.
The accusations by Western-backed anti-graft investigators forced the resignation of Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko. The former key ally of Vladimir Zelensky has fled the country and reportedly resides in Vienna now.
