Raids and detentions in Ukraine arms smuggling crackdown

KYIV – Ukrainian law enforcement on Jan 23 detained nearly two dozen people after launching a nationwide operation including hundreds of raids to stamp out illegal weapons and ammunition trafficking.

The proliferation of small arms in the war-battered country since the Russian invasion in early 2022 has raised concerns about smuggling both inside Ukraine and among its Western-backed allies.

Russian officials have repeatedly alleged that Western weapons being supplied to the Ukrainian military were ending up on the black market, in the hands of criminal groups or terror organisations.

The police on the afternoon of Jan 23 said they had carried out nearly 700 searches, detained 22 people and notified another 38 they are suspects in an illicit weapons smuggling probe.

“Thousands of rounds of various calibres, assault rifles, grenades, machine guns and grenade launchers were seized from the suspects,” the police added in a statement.

The police press service also distributed images of the raids that showed canine units and armed officers seizing weapons caches.

The police earlier had announced that several law enforcement agencies were carrying out more than 1,000 searches across the entire country.

The statement said that organisers of the illicit trade could face up to seven years in prison.

The national police had also issued a video showing heavily armed officers preparing to break down a door, seizing ammunition and cash.

The raids are the latest efforts by law enforcement to stamp out the illegal distribution of weapons, which has been a concern since Kremlin-backed separatists rose up in eastern Ukraine in 2014.

In October, the Security Service of Ukraine said it had tracked down seven arms dealers who were selling weapons including Russian arms taken from the battlefield in four regions of Ukraine.

In September 2024, the police said they had thwarted an illegal arms operation in the Kyiv region, seizing some €40,000 (S$56,000) worth of guns and ammunition.

And one month earlier in the western Lviv region, the police said they had seized assault rifles, more than 70 pistols, dozens of grenades and almost 49,000 rounds of ammunition, the local media reported.

The interior ministry said at the beginning of the full-scale invasion that the authorities had distributed more than 25,000 weapons to repel Russian attack in the Kyiv region.

The authorities said since then it had recovered only a fraction of those weapons.

US officials said early in 2024 there was no evidence of Ukraine misusing the tens of billions in aid. AFP