French Protesters Using Western Weapons Supplied to Kiev - Russian Foreign Ministry

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russia has repeatedly warned Western countries against arm supplies to the Kiev regime, noting that some of the products may end up on the black market.

Weapons supplied by Western countries to Ukraine are being used by protesters in France, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday.

"Weapons delivered to Kiev [by the West, NATO and France] end up in the hands of protesters and are used against police in France," Zakharova told reporters.

She stressed that arms provided to “nationalists, Nazis and fascists on Ukrainian territory backfire and not only end up in their countries [Western countries] but also are used against their own people."

Western countries have been supplying military equipment to Ukraine since the start of hostilities in February 2022. The assistance evolved from lighter artillery munitions and training in 2022 to heavier weapons, including tanks, later that year and in 2023. For the past several months Ukraine has been pushing to be supplied with fighter jets.

Russian officials have repeatedly voiced concerns that arms supplied to Ukraine will eventually end up on the black market and fall into the hands of terrorists or criminal organizations, thus jeopardizing the security of the entire Europe and increasing the risk of a direct clash between Russia and NATO.

Speaking about Ukraine's plans to commit an act of sabotage at the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant (ZNPP), Zakharova said that there were no reactions from the UN to Russia’s concerns over the plant's safety.

“Apparently, the UN Secretariat is completely indifferent to the fact that the Ukrainian authorities are not abandoning their attempts to commit sabotage against the ZNPP,” Zakharova told a briefing.

Black Market Weapons Bonanza

Ever since the Western countries began to feed the Kiev regime’s insatiable hunger for weapons to further fuel the conflagration, Russia has been warning that such deliveries will not only prolong the conflict, but are fraught with other risks. Specifically, Moscow warned that lack of weapons oversight would result in the huge amounts of sophisticated Western weaponry ending up on the international black market.

Ukraine had the reputation of being purportedly one of the largest arms trafficking markets in Europe already before the conflict escalated in 2022, according to the US-funded 2021 Global Organized Crime Index. For instance, of the more than 300,000 small arms that disappeared from Ukraine between 2013 and 2015, only around 13% were ever recovered, according to a 2017 briefing by the Small Arms Survey, a Geneva-based independent research project. The problem of illegal and uncontrolled arms trafficking intensified after the start of Western arms supplies to the Kiev regime.

Although the US and European officials have largely sought to downplay the scale of the problem, already last year an American media report quoted Washington and Pentagon officials as complaining that arms were vanishing in the "fog" of the Ukraine conflict. The media outlet quoted sources as saying that "the US has few ways to track the substantial supply of anti-tank, anti-aircraft and other weaponry it has sent across the border into Ukraine."

Needless to say, there are people quite happy to profiteer from the smuggling of NATO weapons.

In April, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh argued that the West knows full well that the weapons they deliver to the Kiev authorities are being sold on the black market. Hersh told the Russian media that "very early, Poland, Romania, [and] other countries on the border were being flooded with weapons we'd been shipping for the war to Ukraine," where the Russian special military operation is underway.

Furthermore, there is no overlooking the impressive track record of US weapons falling into the wrong hands, with Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, being just a few of the examples.

Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov told reporters this March that Moscow has “serious concerns” that part of US military supplies to Ukraine will end up on the black market.

“Where will weapons pop up? Who will bear responsibility when the materiel falls into the hands of some terrorist groups and criminal organizations?" Antonov said, adding that such a policy jeopardizes the security of all of Europe, and hightens the risk of a direct clash between Russia and NATO.

At a meeting of defense ministers in New Delhi in April, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu underscored that the weapons transferred by Kiev end up in the hands of terrorists worldwide, and are already spreading across the Middle East region.

Denis Pushilin, acting head of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), which became part of Russia last year, likewise told Sputnik that foreign weapons being supplied to Ukraine, including the Javelin anti-tank systems, are now being sold on the black market. He added that “this kind of weaponry is being moved in large quantities to African countries, too.

As for the endless supply of military assistance still being funneled to Kiev, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov repeatedly emphasized that any cargo that contains weapons for Ukraine will become a legitimate target for Russia.