Soldier of Fortune Magazine The Journal of Professional Adventurers
by A.R. Fomenko
For smugglers, “Ukraine is a candy store:” Soldier of Fortune publisher Susan Katz Keating.
VIENNA BUREAU – Stolen, imported, or taken from dead soldiers on the battlefield: weapons and ammunition have flooded the black market inside Ukraine, and now are being hunted and retaken in a series of police raids, officials said. Among the targets are known criminals and people posing in other capacities for cover, such as business or humanitarian work.
About 1,000 raids were launched throughout Ukraine on Thursday, police said, with more on tap to address a situation that one contact describes as having widespread reach.
“We’re tackling it, one tentacle at a time,” a local law enforcement official told Soldier of Fortune. “We’re looking to see where they trace, where the connections are.”
Types of weapons that have been seized.
The raids involved a number of door-kicking operations, police said.
“They didn’t see us coming,” the law enforcement official said, adding that arrogance is inherent within the trade, and that smugglers grow complacent.
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“The main goal is to shut down sales and storage channels as well as to seize trophy weapons” obtained from Russian soldiers, plus “ammunition and explosives from illicit trafficking,” Ukraine’s national police force said on social media.
The raids indicate the scope of an underground arms bazaar that has existed inside the country for years, but burgeoned after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Arms smuggling is a longstanding enterprise throughout the region writ large, according to Soldier of Fortune publisher Susan Katz Keating.
“A lot of this went on during The Troubles in Northern Ireland and in the years before and after the breakup of Yugoslavia,” said Keating, who has witnessed such activities on the ground in these areas, both as a child and while a journalist reporting on scene.
One case in particular stands out, she said, involving a group that was accused of sending rifles, ammunition, and explosives into Yugoslavia and its successor countries in the 1990’s. The alleged operation involved arms being shipped under various flags out of Belarus and Ukraine and through a circuitous route that included Turkey and Egypt.
“It was very complex, just as these operations are today,” Keating said. “It’s also lucrative, and no surprise that it would take place in Ukraine. In terms of the arms trade, Ukraine is a candy store.”
In April 2024, officials in Ukraine intercepted the transfer of arms and trophy weapons that were obtained on the battlefields along the front lines between Ukraine and Russia.
In September, police thwarted an arms smuggling operation around Kyiv. In August, officials in Lviv confiscated a cache of rifles, pistols, grenades, and some 50,000 rounds of ammunition, officials said.
Current ringleaders could face “serious prison time” in Ukraine, the law enforcement source said.
Will it be a deterrence?
“Probably not,” Keating said. “The trade is too lucrative, and for many, it’s worth the risk.”
A.R. Fomenko is based out of Soldier of Fortune’s Vienna Bureau.
