Not since the last world war have so many weapons been sent from the United States to battlefields in Europe, a fact that has enabled Ukraine to resist and even embarrass a formidable Russian adversary. But the influx of guns into a country with a long-term corruption problem has also raised concerns — good faith and bad — that the fog of war could provide cover for a booming trade in illicit arms. …

It takes an almost incomprehensible lack of shame for Russian propagandists to complain about arms in an active conflict zone — of the Kremlin’s own creation — possibly ending up somewhere else. The invading power has itself sent a staggering number of weapons to Ukraine, delivering them for years to local proxies in the Donbas and more recently to conscripts who have promptly abandoned them, armored personnel carriers, howitzers, rocket launchers and all, as Russia’s sure-thing victory has begun to look a lot more like a quagmire.

The good news is that, according to authorities and arms control experts who spoke to Insider, fears that advanced Western arms to Ukraine would fuel the illicit arms trade have not been borne out, with weapons intended for the military in fact being used to push back Russian forces.

[That may be true for now, but will those same “authorities and arms control experts” be able to keep a black market in arms from erupting when the war ends, and when both sides will be desperate for some income? — Ed]