Kuzio, Taras. 2008 ‘Ukrainian Officials, Illicit Arms Sales and International Responsibility.’ Odd Bedfellows: Sierra Leonean Diamonds and Ukrainian Arms; 2 (1), p. 1. New York, NY: Harriman Institute, Columbia University. 18 April

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A [Ukraine] Parliamentary Commission headed by army Lieutenant-General Oleksandr Ihnatenko investigated the [West African] arms transfers and concluded that of the $89 billion stocks in 1992, a massive $57 billion had gone missing.

Ihnatenko was stripped of his military rank and threatened with court martial for divulging 'military secrets'.

An inventory of Ukrainian arms was not conducted until the last two years of the Kuchma regime in 2003-2004; in other words, no inventory had ever been undertaken in the decade 1992-2002 when Ukrainian officials were heavily involved in illicit arms transfers to conflict zones like Western Africa.

Then Defence Minister Yevhen Marchuk… concluded that Ukraine had no unified accounting system and had never undertaken an inventory of military equipment.

In the two inventories undertaken in 2003 Marchuk found hundreds of millions of dollars of weapons stocks missing. Often equipment that had been paid by the West to be dismantled under the CFE Treaty had been illicitly exported.

[Taras Kuzio: Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Toronto]

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