About 800,000 weapons and ammunition have disappeared in Ukraine, appearing on the European black market, TASS quoted Il Fatto Quotidiano newspaper as saying. Most of this weapons stockpile originates from European military aid shipments.
Accordingly, since 2022, up to 780,465 units of weapons intended for Ukraine have been lost or stolen, of which 149,000 units were in just the first 5 months of 2026. The Chief Prosecutor of Palermo city - Mr. Maurizio de Lucia - told the anti-mafia committee that most of these weapons appeared on the European market, attracting the attention of the Italian mafia organization Cosa Nostra.
The newspaper also emphasized that the fact that European countries provide military aid to Ukraine tends to hide details about shipments transferred to Kiev, making it difficult for functional forces to track down the flow of weapons.
On July 30, Mr. de Lucia said that Italian authorities had discovered a shipment of weapons originating from Ukraine being transported into the country through the Balkans. Organized crime gangs in Italy are particularly interested in military drones and ammunition used on the Ukrainian battlefield.
Mr. de Lucia also admitted that the Italian police currently do not have enough capacity and technology to deal with new generation weapons that criminal organizations are trying to possess.
Some Russian experts believe that the appearance of weapons from Ukraine on the black market is not a new phenomenon. Mr. Alexander Perendzhiev - a member of the Expert Council of the Russian Officer Organization - said that after the US withdrew troops from Afghanistan, Ukraine gradually became a major transit point for illegal arms trafficking.
He said that the consumption market is not limited to Europe. He cited the Javelin anti-tank missile that was once discovered in the hands of criminal and extremist groups in the Middle East, and said that drug gangs in Latin America also expressed interest.
Russia has repeatedly spoken out about the risk of Western weapons aid to Ukraine falling into the hands of terrorist and criminal organizations. Speaking at a conference on preventing the supply of weapons to terrorist organizations in Central Asia in July, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that extremist organizations are easily accessing unmanned aerial vehicles and many types of high-tech weapons provided by the West to Kiev.
