Pentagon says unaware if Azov Battalion receiving US arms in Ukraine
6 Min Read
The United States is embroiled in yet another controversy, unable to verify whether the Azov Battalion was receiving arms from Washington in Ukraine.
-
Soldiers of the Ukrainian 3rd Army Assault Brigade of the Special Operations Forces (SSO) "Azov", formerly known as the Azov Battalion, near their armored US-made and supplied Humvee vehicle in position near Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Saturday, Feb. 11, 2023 (AP Photo/Libkos)
The United States appears to have a trend when it comes to the Ukraine war, as it seldom seems to know where the arms and aid it is sending Kiev are going, with various reports coming out from Washington about the White House and the Pentagon not knowing how their arms and monetary aid are being utilized.
Despite countless visual evidence suggesting the opposite, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl said during a congressional hearing on Tuesday that the United States is not aware of whether the Azov Battalion has access to American arms provided to Ukraine.
Read next: Pentagon lobbied to remove neo-Nazi battalion ban, succeeded
"Not that I'm aware of," Kahl said when asked if the Azov Battalion is getting access to US weapons.
Additionally, Kahl refused to discuss in an unclassified setting whether CIA personnel were operating in Ukraine and providing training to the Ukrainians.
He did, however, say that the only US Defense Department personnel in Ukraine are located at the US embassy in Kiev.
It is worth noting that in November, the Biden administration said it was scurrying to track down the approximately $20 billion in military aid it sent to Ukraine.
The Biden administration is running into major obstacles tracking the aid sent from Washington to Kiev, which has amounted to tens of billions of dollars since the start of the Ukraine war, resorting to blockchain technology and Ukrainian personnel to help them track the aid flowing into their country, a State Department cable obtained by Politico said in mid-December 2022.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration was mulling utilizing a certain unnamed US firm by February to implement a three-year initiative that would help with oversight regarding the aid making it into Ukraine, Politico said, citing a "sensitive but unclassified" document.
The cable, sent out from the US embassy in Kiev back in September, details what the United States is going through in terms of oversight as it tries and watch where its money is going as they abide by the restrictions and limits on the number of officials they can have in the field as well as the security measures prohibiting them from moving flexibly.
Republicans were warning of impending audits after they take over the House in January.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has previously stated that Ukraine would not receive a "blank check". The purpose of the audit was meant to track how the funds are being delivered and exactly where - as prior suspicions point to many shipped arms ending up on the black market.
Controversial Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, who announced the audit decision, promised to "hold our government accountable", as other colleagues such as Rep. Jason Crow echoed to The Washington Post: "The taxpayers deserve to know that investment is going where it's intended to go," adding: "In any war, there can be missteps and misallocation of supplies."
Former President Donald Trump slammed Washington's generous hand-over of cash and weapons to Ukraine: The US, according to Trump, has too many problems of its own to hand money and weapons to Ukraine for its conflict with Russia, insisting that if anything it's Europe that should be providing more help to Kiev given that they're more affected by the situation.
This itself comes after reports from US media said that as Washington and its western allies continue to pump weapons into Kiev, maintenance of the armaments is increasingly becoming a headache.
The aforementioned cable also talked about how crises such as the one in Ukraine can turn into a fiasco that Washington just throws money at until it becomes an over-expensive hassle that the cash allocated to cannot be tracked precisely due to the ensuing chaos and the corruption that the governments taking the money are notorious for, such as Ukraine and Afghanistan.
Moreover, in addition to burdening the US with requests for aid, Ukraine is selling weapons it acquired from its allies on the black market due to the Kiev forces' limited ability to use them because of their lack of training, logistical challenges, and the diminishing size of the Ukrainian armed force, according to former senior Pentagon adviser Karen Kwiatkowski.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu previously said the arms supplied by the West to Ukraine were ending up on the black market and spreading across West Asia. This validates the Pentagon's concerns, as sensitive technology being sent to Ukraine would not be the best for the US in the long term.
Why train Ukrainians on F-16s?
Kahl said that it made no sense to begin training Ukrainians on F-16 fighter jets given that they may never receive the system.
“Since we haven’t made the decision to provide F-16s… it doesn’t make sense to start to train them on a system they may never get,” Kahl said during a House Armed Services Committee hearing.
US President Joe Biden told reporters in late January that the US would not be sending F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, which Ukraine's leaders have said are at the top of their latest weapons wish list.
This comes despite a group of US military officials quietly lobbying for sending F-16s to Ukraine, Politico reported, citing three anonymous sources familiar with the matter.
According to the newspaper, the campaign for F-16s to Ukraine is gaining momentum in the Pentagon, while Kiev is bracing for a planned offensive this spring.
US production base weaknesses revealed by war
Washington's involvement in the Ukraine war revealed the weakness of its defense industrial base's ability to produce adequate amounts of munitions.
"I think what the Ukraine conflict showed is that, frankly, our defense industrial base was not at the level it needed to be to generate munitions," Kahl told a House Armed Services Committee.
A US Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville underlined in September that the US needed to replenish and upgrade its stocks of military equipment.
"We need to replenish our stocks and we need to replenish our weapons systems," McConville said during an interview at the Defense News Conference. "When we do replace them, we want to replace them with new equipment."
US military acquisition executives are working closely with the defense industrial base to project the sorts of items the Pentagon may need, McConville added.
The US is also investing to make sure it can provide Ukraine with the munitions they need, Kahl added.
