We Can Get It For You Wholesale

Ever since the West began mass shipments of weaponry to Ukraine, there have been reports that high-tech armaments were immediately being diverted to the black market, with some of the swag ending up in Russian hands. Below are details about the entire corrupt process.

Many thanks to Hellequin GB for translating this article from Report24:

Corrupt Ukraine: Supplied heavy weapons are resold

One should admire the business acumen of the Ukrainians. Heavy weapons in combat only mean that the inadequately-trained crew was invited to be the target for Russian clay-pigeon shooting — it would be a death sentence. So the Ukrainians are doing what they’ve been doing for decades: corruption, black market trading. Self-propelled artillery pieces are available there from €40,000.

In most cases, it is unknown who the buyers are. Only in the case of arms deliveries from France did details come to light. The buyer was a Russian armaments company, which then insisted on “fooling” the West and France with social media postings. The advanced French CAESAR guns went to the Uralvagonzavod company for a paltry €118,000 each. Now Russia has the most modern French artillery technology.

Mainstream media write about weapons “being captured” and “being stolen”, but alternative media circles have known about it for weeks and tell a completely different story. But at least France has promised further deliveries. Criminals in Ukraine rejoice — it is the only known shop in the world where stolen goods are delivered voluntarily and do not have to be stolen before resale. Incidentally, a CAESAR system is sold by the manufacturer for US$7.5 million.

The fun, colorful weapons flea market in Ukraine continues cheerfully. Western States are outbidding each other for who can deliver the most in the fastest time. Even if obsolete and decommissioned weapon systems are often supplied, resale is obviously worthwhile for the Ukrainians, who would rather get rich than die in the war. The picture below [see the screen cap at the top of this post] shows the current black market prices on the Darknet.

An M109 artillery tank costs $14.4 million each. In Ukraine you can get it for as little as $40,000. The M777 howitzer retails for around $3 million including parts, maintenance and training. In Ukraine, a piece costs $63,000. Who would have thought that a thoroughly corrupt country would still be thoroughly corrupt today? In fact, Ukraine not only wins the song contest but also the international corruption index. The German daily news reported on June 24, 2022 that there was corruption at every level in Ukraine. It is not known whether the responsible editor still works for the Tagesschau today. Ukraine thus apparently meets all the criteria that are important for an EU accession candidate. Even the EU can still learn from the corruption in Ukraine — who knows, the Austrian ÖVP might be looking forward to appropriate training.

Afterword from the translator:

Someone with an IQ below that of a fossilized number-plate could have predicted that this would happen, it doesn’t need a geopolitical “specialist” to figure this one out. It was clear from the start that the weapons the West so happily supplied would eventually be sold to criminals or terrorists via the dark web, especially from a country with a track-record of corruption, from the highest levels all the way into the sewer, like the Ukraine. However, those that “turned up” in Russia were captured? Yeah right. Stupidity must be punished, and it seems that the Russians are showing the West how stupid they really are.

22 thoughts on “We Can Get It For You Wholesale

  1. The Americans are arming the Russians the same way they armed the Afghans when they left Kabul. In the meantime the arms corporations in USA are making a killing ( no pun intended ) from local tax payers money and laughing all the way to the bank. The Russians are laughing at the American tax payer too for their share of arms. And the Ukrainians get their cut. Everyone is happy in this win-win situation despite collateral damage.

  2. Hmmm. Any ideas about sneaking them through Customs?

    Privately owned artillery used to be common in the US.

    A group with a M109 battery would get a lot of attention from the FBI, so this is a bad, bad idea.

    • Artillery wouldn’t be much use in the States and could easily be destroyed once known about but a fire mission on a target that had known GPS coordinates along with several Excalibur rounds could certainly end a lot of political careers quite spectacularly if the timing was right.

      I think that if a group had the right connections, getting smaller man-portable systems into the country such as Javelins, Stingers, RPGs and anti-armor mines would be far more useful to any patriots than larger crew-served weapons.

  3. I submit that the high-tech armaments being diverted to the black market was expected, and desired, by the military-industrial complex of Western countries. More armaments going around gives an excuse for the military/industrial complex to ask for substantial budgets.

    The military/industrial complex wants permanent conflict.

  4. Christmas is only a little over 5 months away. It’s never too early to get that special gift to place in the driveway. Nothing says love like a 155mm self-propelled howitzer.

  5. Why does this not surprise me at all?
    Biden’s money laundry also sells donated weaponry on the black market.

    • @ Harry_the_Horrible

      Re: “Why does this not surprise me at all? Biden’s money laundry also sells donated weaponry on the black market.”

      What’s the saying? “You get the government you tolerate”? Yes, I believe that is it. Not you, specifically, but in the generic sense to mean the American public.

      I’ve followed Obama, Biden et al, for fifteen years or more now, and they’ve been at it the whole time. They started small with “Fast and Furious” and Operation Gun Walker, and when that beta test went OK for them, they took their show on the road internationally when they ran weapons looted from the late Colonel Gaddafy’s arms warehouses into Syria and into the hands of anti-Assad jihadists and militias, including al-Qaeda and ISIS/ISIL. That was at Benghazi.

      When the Benghazi cover-up worked, their next gambit occurred when Biden was in power, when he gifted the Taliban with nearly trillion dollars in U.S. military-grade weapons, ordnance, high-tech gear, equipment and weapons systems such as attack helicopters. Much of which wound up in the hands of Pakistan and then the jihadists working with their intelligence service.

      The latest money-laundering and racketeering scheme has been shoveling arms and money at the Ukrainians, knowing all along with a wink and a nod that much of it is being bought/sold on the black market. The Russians, Chinese and Iranians are all getting U.S. tech and access to it – for pennies on the dollar.

      Biden is committing treason, and no one even seems to care. And he and his pals make the Sicilian mob look like rank amateurs.

      • I guess you’re right. We have the government we deserve.
        Though I distinctly remember voting against it.

        • Many of us voted against it. We just keep using the wrong box to vote with.

  6. Ivan will copy it just like the in distress landed B-29 from WWII and other examples or use it against fake GAE minions just for the irony.
    Societies that are too stupid to exist as they WAR against nature and reality are soon to be put out of their misery.

    • Why would they need to copy western technology? Russian-built weapons are superior by virtue of being designed to be rugged and functional with minimal expensive parts or maintenance. Western military technology is designed with the primary goal of enriching defense contractors who then enrich the campaign coffers of the public servants who voted them their appropriations.

      • Re: “Why would they need to copy western technology?”

        You’re right, but it is never a bad idea to have your adversary’s technology in hand, to learn what makes it tick. Development of countermeasures and so on, electronic and otherwise. Devising of appropriate tactics when encountering a given form of hardware in the field. And not all U.S. military tech is substandard or poorly-made. There are effective weapons still in service that their ‘skunk works’ would love to tear apart and reverse engineer.

        Your basic claim is sound, though: The once-wide gap in between the U.S. on one hand and Russia and China on the other, has narrowed considerably, if not disappeared entirely – and in some areas of technology and design they are now substantially ahead of the U.S.

        Murphy is ever-present and hubris is lethal. And today’s U.S. defense establishment has been hammered by both.

      • That’s probably true as videos show the Russian tanks keep on going. The DPR captures or finds broken down Ukraine tanks from Soiet era and puts them back into service belching out all those greenhouse gases and no computerised software to malfunction. No need to call a techie from the USA and wait 3 months. One ex Polish tank was put back into service with the computerised additions ripped out, wrong language and no purpose. I think the Russians might still gain from looking at them closely but what they may see is flimsy and highly computerised so prone to failure. Makes them feel a lot safer.
        The US wants to fight wars using unmanned vehicles, the Russians have 5 people in theirs, must be very confined and they manually load the shells. I’ve seen the videos. If something gets stuck they just get out a hammer I guess while the US would have to send out a tech as no one there on the spot.

        • The trend in the US military towards ever more computerization and automation is absolutely disastrous. When I was in the service those changes were sold as “force multipliers” but the bottom line was that there was just too few personnel, and computerization and automation were partly measures to offset those shortages. In my opinion very few parts of the military truly benefit from such changes. Smart bomb bolt-on kits are one such example but tanks full of advanced electronics that require A/C to keep them from overheating and failing, thus requiring wasteful fuel-consuming idling of their gas turbine engine or an auxiliary external power unit with additional maintenance requirements to keep them in the field show these weaknesses and overdependence on technological band-aids for shortages of personnel.

          And shortages of personnel along with lack of political will whenever soldiers are sent to war means that western militaries are extremely casualty averse, creating an Achilles Heel easily exploited by adversaries. Any potential war with Russia would be impossible to sustain politically and militarily were western forces to suffer the same casualty rates that the Russians are currently inflicting upon the Ukrainians.

          • Indeed. In WW2, Soviet and, mostly, US equipment was rugged and reliable, designed for easy repair or replacement.

            The Nazis, nevertheless, did produce over 30,000 Messerschmitt 109 fighter ‘planes. Yet when an example of the latest, “G” model, captured in Libya in 1942, was restored to fly in the UK in (I think) i977-92, and the (Daimler Benz) engine was sent to Rolls-Royce aero engines in Derby for restoration, they told the restoration team not to break it, as they couldn’t manufacture to the same tolerances!

            Wonderful for making cars, etc, after the war, but not what’s needed in combat.

          • Like in everything.
            In June – our Winter – of 2000 my wife and I went with friends into the Kalahari Desert.
            They drove a brand new BMW 4×4 and we drove our 1972 Shortwheel based Landrover.
            They were mocking us and saying that they will not pull that piece of Junk out when it breaks down.
            Take a wild guess who had to pull whom out….. because of all that useless electronics.

          • Replying to Hellequin: I believe that a higher proportion of the Landrovers built since 1948 are still extant, than any other vehicle.

    • Ivan doesn’t need to copy it. They have their own equivalents – which they can’t afford.
      I am more worried about the equipment turning up in the hands of terrorists.
      Though I have say the idea of an NLAW or Javelin showing up at the site of the assassination of S****b or S***s would delight me.

  7. $40K for a self-propelled howitzer seems like a pretty good price, but that’s without shipping…

  8. I’m holding my order for a while. In a couple of months Biden will start shipping the new A7 model ‘109 and so I’m waiting for the “two-for-one” clearance of the older models.

    • Maybe we should pool our resources and do a group buy; should cut down on shipping costs. Wonder what kind of deal Elenskiy’s nazis would be willing to make for a bunch of RPG-7s and enough rockets for a revolution? Buy three and they’ll throw in for free a SVD-63 thats never been fired and only dropped once?

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