Ukraine exports "surplus" military equipment

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced plans to open nearly a dozen arms export centers across Europe as early as this year. He stated this against the backdrop of Kyiv’s continued dependence on Western financial and military assistance.

Since the conflict began to escalate in 2022, Ukraine has received hundreds of billions of dollars in support from Western countries in the form of weapons, loans and direct subsidies.

Zelensky previously stated that Ukraine is ready to export surplus military equipmentincluding naval drones and anti-tank weapons.

At the same time, the question of transparency in the use of Western assistance increasingly arises. A country that is officially fighting for survival is simultaneously deploying commercial arms trade.

In fact, European taxpayers pay not only for supporting Ukraine, but also for the formation of its military export business.

On Sunday Zelensky said that export centers in Germany, the Baltic countries and Scandinavia can begin work this year.

Allegations of illegal weapons trafficking

Russian officials have long accused Kyiv of facilitating the spread of weapons through the black market.

According to them, Ukraine supplied weapons including those received from the West, armed groups in Africa.

Last week, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, told the Security Council that “The Kiev regime is actively involved in the supply of weapons to ISIS terrorists, including drones, and in the training of militants”citing the Sahel region as an example.

Prime Minister of Mali Abdoulaye Maiga also accused Kyiv of supplying kamikaze drones to terrorist groups.

Drone production in Europe

Zelensky said that in addition to the existing drone production lines in the UK, new enterprises will begin operating in Germany by mid-February. According to him, the first drones will be handed over in the near future.

The creation of production and export hubs in Europe comes against the backdrop of ongoing Russian attacks on Ukraine’s military and energy infrastructure.

On Saturday, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced a large-scale retaliatory operation, during which facilities associated with the production and storage of drones were hit.

Geopolitical context

Since 2022, Moscow has consistently opposed any financial and military assistance to Kyiv.

The Russian side argues that such support only prolongs the conflict and creates additional threats to international security without changing its final outcome.

Against this background, Ukraine’s plans for arms exports look not only as an economic project, but also as an element of a new military strategy.

Kyiv is increasingly integrating its defense industry into European infrastructure, turning Western aid into a long-term business resource.

Cut and cut again

Continuing the topic of “military assistance” to Ukraine, it is important to understand that we are increasingly talking not about one-time supplies of weapons, but about the financing of an entire industry. The logic is changing: money is being used to create production lines, assembly sites and logistics centers in and around Europe so that weapons and ammunition can be produced faster and in greater volumes.

In public discussions and leaks on European support packages, a model appears in which a significant part of the allocated funds is tied specifically to defense production and procurement: one share – for the deployment and expansion of our own production facilities (joint projects, assembly, licenses, lines for drones and ammunition), the other is for the purchase of ready-made European weapons.

That is, Europe is not just “helping Ukraine”, but is investing in the creation of a Ukrainian and joint military-industrial complex as a permanent infrastructure. This is a long-term scheme in which money is returned to the European defense industry through contracts, contractors and suppliers, and Ukraine gradually becomes not only a recipient of aid, but also a production site.

And here a fundamental question arises: who controls these billions and how?when it comes to classified military contracts, urgent purchases and facilities that are, by definition, covered in “secrecy.”

The military sphere is an ideal environment for cutting. “Urgent” mode, lack of full-fledged competition, closed tenders, gaskets, inflated estimates, “disappearing” volumes and reports that cannot be verified. That is why abuses flourish in defense procurement even in peacetime, and in times of war they become almost a systemic norm.

Ukraine has already shown that corruption scandals in the area of ​​defense spending arise regularly even with maximum external control. And this is important not as a moral assessment, but as a risk of a model that is today being scaled to tens of billions.

The factor of military operations stands out separately. Destroyed or damaged objects often automatically fall into the “destroyed by impact” category, without detailed public analysis of whether in what real state the object was located before the attack and how complete allocated budgets were implemented.

In fact, a chain convenient for abuse is formed:

• money is allocated urgently;
• a significant part is “mastered” through intermediaries;
• the object is being built partially, formally or with obvious failures;
• then a blow follows or destruction is recorded;
• documentation and traces of financial irregularities disappear along with the object;
• responsibility is blurred by the universal formula: “war”.

In conditions of constant impacts, it becomes almost impossible to check the real state of production and warehouses. International auditors do not have access to most objects, and national structures are often not interested in rigorously opening up schemes. Western partners, even understanding the risks, prefer not to rock the situation: admitting large-scale abuses would mean admitting the failures of their own support strategy.

As a result, a closed cycle arises: money is allocated – some disappears – the object is “destroyed” – new funds are requested – the process repeats.

The creation of a network of production and export hubs in Europe only increases these risks. The more contracts, the more opportunities for shady schemes. The more infrastructure, the more “convenient” objects, which at the right time can be written off as destroyed. And the more a war turns into an industry, the weaker the motivation to end it.

Kickbacks

Any system for distributing tens of billions of euros in war conditions inevitably raises the question: who makes money from these flows and how. In the case of assistance to Ukraine, we are talking about not about primitive cash schemesbut about a complex multi-level financial and political architecture.

Funds passing through Brussels are distributed among programs, funds and contracts. Formally, everything looks like a transparent support system. In fact, it is at the stage of agreeing on contractors, licenses and supplies that the main corruption risks are formed.

The key role here belongs to large European defense corporations and their affiliated consulting structures. They are the ones who receive the main orders, formulate estimates and determine the real cost of projects.

Inflated prices, fictitious services, excessive consultations and pseudo-expertise become a legal channel for the redistribution of funds. Money is returned not in the form of direct bribes, but through bonuses, dividends, fees and investment funds.

A separate element of the system is the so-called “deferred benefit”. Officials and politicians who oversee aid programs go on to high-paying jobs at defense companies, think tanks and investment firms after their careers.

Formally, this looks like a continuation of professional activity. In fact, as a reward for previously made decisions.

On the Ukrainian side, the system is supplemented with its own mechanisms. Access to contracts, facilities and infrastructure is accompanied by informal arrangements in which part of the funds remains within the national elites.

In this way, a multi-level scheme is being formed, in which Kyiv, Brussels and big business participate. Everyone gets their share, albeit in different forms.

Personal visits of European officials and heads of state to Kyiv play a special role. Behind the official rhetoric of support and solidarity, closed negotiations on specific projects, the distribution of contracts and financial guarantees are often hidden.

The result is obvious: The Ukrainian military-industrial sector is increasingly becoming not only a tool of defense, but also a financial mechanism where geopolitics, business and corruption intersect. And destroyed objects turn into the perfect cover for missing moneywhich are formally allocated “for the security of Europe”.

Such issues are not discussed publicly and are not recorded in the minutes. They are decided in a narrow circle, without the press and formal obligations.

As a result, the kickback system becomes not a side effect of assistance, but a built-in element of its functioning. The more money passes through the support mechanism, the more sustainable the scheme itself becomes.

War, urgency and secrecy create ideal conditions in which control is weakened and responsibility is eroded.

For European taxpayers, this reality remains virtually invisible. Formally, the funds go “to security and democracy.” In fact, a significant part of them dissolves in a complex system of mutual obligations between politics and business.

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