Kyiv police arrested 3 men for attempting to sell an AK-74 assault rifle for $1,500, which was smuggled out of the conflict zone in Donbas, according to the police’s press service.
Analyst’s Assessment: The recent wave of crimes in Ukraine specifically involving the use of contraband assault rifles, hand guns, and grenades continues.
As we noted earlier, Ukrainian military intelligence officials have confirmed that massive amounts of firearms and grenades are currently being sold for cash/bartered for alcohol and finding their way outside of the conflict zone and onto Ukraine’s streets – mainly smuggled or sold by service personnel. Our human intelligence sources confirm that the market for illicit weapons trade has grown at an alarming rate over the course of the past year – a growth rate that continues to accelerate.
As we also assessed earlier, the main drivers of this accelerated trend in the availability of black market arms in Ukraine are a sluggish economy; high unemployment; a high and untreated PTSD rate among returning veterans; high supply/relative ease of access to small- and close-range arms by both active and decommissioned military personnel (since these small/close-range weapons are only intermittently used in current conflict theaters); small size/ease of concealment; high profitability/favorable risk-reward; and increasing demand by Ukrainian private citizens for illegal weapons for self-defense purposes given the national security context and heightened concern over the boom in crime levels.
The war in the east and the growing market for black market arms have directly fueled crime levels in Ukraine and created a vicious cycle that continues to deteriorate. Growing demand for black market arms criminalizes and destabilizes Ukrainian society, ultimately encouraging the kind of vigilante-style murders and robberies we are now seeing in the country.
