Arms being smuggled out of Ukraine

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The European police agency Europol has received reports of arms smuggling into the EU - originating from individuals and criminal networks.  Politicians now call for checks on the whereabouts of weapons.

The European police authority, Europol has received indications of organised arms smuggling from Ukraine. Several cases of individuals trying to leave Ukraine with firearms have been reported to the agency. "EU Member States and operational partners have reported cases of criminal networks operating in the region and smuggling or planning to smuggle significant quantities of firearms and ammunition, including military weapons" - reads a letter from Europol to the Council of the European Union. It deals with the implications of the war in Ukraine and the terrorist threat for the European Union. The document has been shown to SWR. In addition, European authorities assume that weapons caches may have been set up along the Ukrainian border with the EU in order to organise smuggling. Criminals operating from Ukraine could therefore return via official border crossings when bringing the weapons to the European side.

Weapons for self-defence and exchange

Another problem, according to Europol, is that countries that have taken in larger numbers of refugees have expressed concern that some Ukrainian refugees are carrying firearms for self-defence. Before crossing into the EU, they left weapons and also ammunition in the border area. According to the authority, such ammunition depots have already been discovered. The document also points out that some Ukrainian refugees are suspected of bringing concealed firearms across the border to sell them in the EU. The fugitives - it is suspected - want to exchange the weapons for goods and services. In some cases, according to the police, taxi rides have allegedly already been paid for with firearms. 

"Learning from the experience of past wars"

Özlem Demirel, MEP for the Left Party, sees the danger that weapons supplied by the Bundeswehr could also enter the EU illegally and thus end up on the black market. "The German assault rifles that Mrs von der Leyen, as Defence Minister at the time, had delivered to the Peshmerga were available for sale on Iraqi markets a short time later," Demirel tells SWR.

Konstatin von Notz, Vice-chairperson of the Green parliamentary group and member of the Interior Committee in the Bundestag, told SWR that one must learn from the experiences of past wars: "We know from the difficult experiences of the Kosovo war in the 1990s that weapons of war can become a relevant security risk: Weapons from crisis and war zones often diffuse into the areas of extremism and organised crime." Von Notz immediately calls for internationally co-ordinated concepts and effective controls on the whereabouts of weapons to effectively curb the danger of arms smuggling.