We’ve been hearing rumors and scattered reports of this since last summer, but any time it’s mentioned publicly, both the White House and their docile servants in the legacy media rush to squash the stories as “Russian disinformation.” But a recent report from the Defense Department’s Inspector General found a “lack of accountability” in maintaining control of the weapons and military gear we have been sending to Ukraine. And that has resulted in millions of dollars worth of arms and weapons winding up in the hands of criminal gangs. It’s going to be hard for our cable news talking heads to write this one off as disinformation unless they want to claim that the IG’s office is in on the scam. Our colleague Sarah Arnold has the details at Townhall.

It turns out all of the millions of dollars worth of arms and weapons the Biden Administration is sending to Ukraine to fight its ongoing war with Russia are ending up in the hands of criminal gangs.

The U.S. Defense Department’s inspector general report found a lack of accountability in maintaining the equipment it sends to Ukraine.

According to the 19-page report by the Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a group posing as humanitarian aid workers worked to obtain a hoard of U.S.-provided bulletproof vests.

🚨 The DOD OIG just released to us a report that shows serious problems in maintaining accountability of equipment provided to Ukraine

This includes criminal gangs getting their hands on a grenade launcher, machine gun, rifles, 1,000s of ammo, etc pic.twitter.com/FXD4gzArtE

— Oversight Project (@OversightPR) July 21, 2023

The gangs have reportedly made off with hundreds of sets of bulletproof armor. And we’re not just talking about some rifles and a few extra magazines. In that one heist described in the tweet above, they managed to get a grenade launcher. Presumably, that wouldn’t have been shipped without some ammo to go with it, right? That must be bringing in a tidy profit on the black market. And how long will it be before that gear is being used against our own advisers stationed over there?

One cache of bulletproof vests that was recovered was valued at $17,000. The Ukrainian security service (SVU) was breaking up gangs selling stolen military year as early as last August. And that’s the truly galling part of all of this. The public is only learning about this now thanks to documents released through a FOIA request. But the IG report in question is dated last October. They’ve known about this for most of the war but the information has been kept from the public even as we keep sending billions and billions more to Kyiv.

There is a bill that was introduced in the House in February that would force an audit of all of the cash and military equipment that’s been going to Ukraine. When it was introduced, Democrats howled, saying that the bill would “undermine strong, bipartisan support for robust assistance to Ukraine.” It should be pretty obvious at this point that the legislation was badly needed. If significant portions of this military aid have been going to make Ukrainian gang lords wealthy, perhaps that “strong, bipartisan support” needs to be undermined a bit.

Perhaps some of these black market losses can fairly be written off to incompetence, chaotic conditions on the ground over there, or just the general fog of war. But the fact that the IG has known about this for at least eight months and that information was never made public isn’t incompetence. It’s a coverup and it shouldn’t be tolerated. Surely there are journalists out there with good contacts inside of the DoD who knew about this. How was it not reported? We went into this knowing that the Ukrainian government was famous for its problems with corruption. Someone needed to be watching far more closely.