A few months ago, Italian newspaper Il Giornale reported that Western military equipment is already being sold out of Ukraine illegally using the encrypted messaging app Telegram.
In addition to Soviet-era AK47s, weapons sold also reportedly include firearms made in NATO countries such as the American M16 and M4, and the Italian ARX 160 A1.
And this may prove to be very ominous going forward, especially in light of an announcement made this week.
Yesterday the U.S. announced a $3 billion dollar arms package to Ukraine – the single largest sum yet in a single package. So far, a total of $9.1 billion in U.S. military aid has been sent to the war torn Eastern European country.
JUST IN – U.S. to announce a $3 billion arms package for Ukraine tomorrow, the single largest yet.
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) August 23, 2022
And that’s just America’s military contribution, of course. The UK has sent £2.3 billion pounds, while Germany has committed to €1.2 billion euros. Canada has offered over $600m dollars.
France, Italy, Finland, Sweden, Australia, Denmark, Poland, Norway, etc. – all of these countries and more have sent crates and crates of weaponry worth ungodly sums of money to the Ukraine. You’re easily talking about billions of euros-worth of rifles, grenades, anti-tank rockets, stinger missiles, and so on.
Even neutral Ireland contributed non-lethal military equipment (despite calls from politicians like Neale Richmond to send lethal stuff as well).
Will Ireland send all our javelin missiles & any other useful hardware? https://t.co/dq4UUz6cvG
— Neale Richmond (@nealerichmond) February 26, 2022
In other words, Ukraine is now awash with lethal, state-of-the-art gear. This small country is absolutely armed to the teeth – and no doubt that will help them give Russia a bloody nose.
But before we all start popping champagne and clinking glasses, it’s worth asking: is bruising Russia the only thing that will happen because of this? Could there be another effect of pouring vast amounts of deadly weaponry into a small and, let’s face it, corrupt country?
Bear in mind, I’m not saying we should or we shouldn’t arm Ukraine – though that’s a vital conversation that needs to be had. Not arming Ukraine would have major consequences as well, needless to say, not least of which would be a likely swift Russian victory. But before we make a decision one way or the other, we should consider the full ramifications of where this might lead.
You see, in life there is a concrete law – a law as strict and binding as the law of gravity or the speed of light. It is ironclad. And if you try to ignore it, it will eventually punish you severely, and bring you crashing unceremoniously back down to earth.
And that law, which Western leaders never seem to take into account, is the law of unintended consequences.
Every action we take inevitably has knock-on consequences that we didn’t anticipate. No matter how carefully you plan an action, regardless of the situation, there are always going to be variables you can’t account for, meaning the things we do will inevitably end up causing secondary and tertiary events that weren’t planned.
Sometimes these consequences are insignificant and barely noticeable. Sometimes, they’re much more consequential and serious. But one way or another, there will be an impact.
And the bigger and more drastic your action is, the bigger the unintended consequences are likely to be. For example, Bosnian revolutionary Gavrilo Princip shooting Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and inadvertently causing the First World War. You shoot one dude, and accidentally create a domino effect which goes on to kill 40 million people. Oops.
So what could a possible outcome of filling Ukraine with advanced weapons be?
Well, we actually don’t have to speculate much here – speaking of Bosnia, something similar actually happened during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
When the Balkan states began to fight, they started producing millions of weapons and distributed them far and wide throughout the population to fight the war – very similar to what Zelensky has done now with conscription, handing out guns even to violent criminal offenders who have combat experience.
Ukrainian prisoners with military experience will be released if they are willing to fight against Russian forces, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky said https://t.co/FFyExstyxK
— The Independent (@Independent) February 28, 2022
However, after the Yugoslavian civil war ended, what happened? Well, now everyone had guns, and didn’t want to give them back. Meaning you have a situation where today, the Interior Ministry of Serbia estimates there are around 900,000 illegal firearms in circulation. That figure is estimated to be 750,000 in Bosnia, and 450,000 in Kosovo both according to the UN.
So in other words, the entire region is absolutely full of deadly, untraceable weapons. And naturally, as one might expect, people often end up selling these weapons on the European black market for a few quid.
This black market makes its way to Europe, and guess what happens then? Believe it or not, gangsters, terrorists and cartels from Galway to Krakow buy them, and use them to cause havoc across the continent. This is an ongoing problem even to this day.
For example, the deadly Islamist Paris attacks in 2015 killed 137 people, and injured at least 416 more. And those attacks were carried out using illegal Yugoslavian Zastava M-70 assault rifles.
The Balkan route to Western Europe for Yugoslavia guns: Many weapons on Europe's black market come via the Bal… https://t.co/B1dlVYb3V7
— DW Europe (@dw_europe) December 5, 2015
Most of the weapons used by European organised crime today can ultimately be traced back to the Balkans.
What’s particularly mad is, the UN had even put an embargo on importing arms to the area to prevent further bloodshed. And yet we’re still dealing with the fallout from that era today 30 years later.
So how much more likely do you think it is that we’d experience similar problems now that billions of euros worth of high tech gear are being pumped into the Ukraine? No doubt some people will sell their weapons under the table, as happened in the Balkans. Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe, after all, and even more so after being flattened in a war like this – people will need money fast.
In addition, other opportunists will simply scavenge the battlefield and strip dead soldiers of their gear before selling it for a quick buck.
Swedish Integration Minister Anders Ygeman spotted this problem a few months ago.
“There are many weapons from the former Yugoslavia in Sweden that are used by organised crime,” he said.
“We must take steps to control the flow of weapons after the war in Ukraine and also destroy weapons that are no longer needed.”
He added: “The lesson that we’ve learned from other conflicts is that I think you have to pay for those weapons in order to collect and destroy them.”
However, an unnamed EU official reportedly said that the EU would not be able to prevent the worst from happening.
“It is hard to avoid weapons-smuggling,” they said.
“We try to keep track of them, but I would be lying if I said we will succeed. We failed after the war in Yugoslavia, and we can’t prevent it now.”
So we’ve essentially resigned ourselves to defeat on this front.
In Ireland alone, many thousands of “combat-grade” anti-tank weapons sent to Ukraine from Belfast may ultimately end up in the possession of dubious characters, an ex-PSNI superintendent already warned.
Speaking to the Sunday Life, Ken Pennington said that about 17,000 NLAW rocket launchers had been sent to Ukraine but not tracked, and that he fears smugglers could sell them to groups like dissident Republicans and the UVF – presumably not to mention any other militants across Europe.
So all-in-all, don’t be shocked if the next decade is plagued by extremely well-armed terrorists and cartels running around with rifles and grenade launchers. Because that’s what we’re walking into.
This outcome was unintended. But it was not unforeseeable. We’ve been here before, and anyone who knows a little bit about history could have predicted it.
If cheerleading for Ukraine is what we’ve committed ourselves to, let’s at least not be naive about it and think the consequences through to the end.