To resist the Russian aggressor, the weapons needs of the Ukrainian troops are immense. Since the start of the fighting in February 2022, the United States and the European Union, to name but a few, have provided billions of dollars worth of weapons of all kinds: rocket launchers, shells, battle tanks, guns, helicopters, missiles, drones, armored vehicles, the list goes on. But, faced with an adversary who fires nearly 40,000 shells every day, the Ukrainians can, for the moment, only respond with 6,000 shots daily.
Getting these weapons and ammunition quickly to front-line soldiers – particularly via the Polish air base in Rzeszow – is a major problem, well analyzed in this fascinating documentary which gives the floor, among others, to Oleksandra Ustinova, Ukrainian MP responsible for the parliamentary commission controlling the receipt of Western weapons and their delivery to the front.
But, faced with the slowness of certain deliveries, Ukrainian civil society is taking over. Example: the Prytula Foundation, which, through the Internet and calls for donations, buys Turkish combat drones and other equipment, which two hundred volunteer drivers go to deliver directly to soldiers on the front line.
Juicy commissions
Faced with this sudden influx of military equipment onto Ukrainian territory, the authors of this documentary, Martin Boudot and Hugo Van Offel, carried out a remarkable investigation, from Kiev to Brussels, via England, Bulgaria, Moldova, and even Moscow. They are trying to answer a sensitive question: how can we prevent these weapons, whose massive circulation favors a parallel market where corrupt characters operate, from ending up in criminal hands?
Because buying weapons means war profiteering. With enormous sums at stake. But these are not the times for elegance, and the Ukrainian authorities assume the responsibility of going through these brokers with their full contact books, who act as intermediaries between arms companies and countries allied to Ukraine, pocketing juicy commissions in the process.
More worrying, these war brokers sometimes allow the names of the sponsors to be hidden. “This is the sad reality of war: our country will buy from anyone, even the devil, if it helps us win this war,” admits Oleksandra Ustinova, facing the camera.
Information warfare
From the small seller who carries weapons in the trunk of his car to the British Mike Mead, who, after having bought armored vehicles from his country’s army, resells this equipment with considerable margins, a whole series of portraits of more or less frequentable offers an insight into this troubled universe. One thing is certain: selling weapons makes a lot of money.
Naturally, Russian propaganda is taking advantage of the situation to launch an information war on the sensitive subject of arms deliveries. At the UN, its representative declared in September 2022: “The proliferation of weapons resold by corrupt Ukrainian bureaucrats is a reality. Weapons that end up in the hands of terrorists and criminal groups. »
A speech repeated on camera by Viktor Bout, whom the authors of the documentary managed to interview, in Moscow. Famous arms trafficker who inspired the film Lord of War (by Andrew Niccol, with Nicolas Cage, 2006) and nicknamed “the merchant of death”, Bout was imprisoned for fourteen years in the United States, before being released in December 2022, as part of a prisoner exchange.
Now an advisor to the Kremlin, he “shoots” all the time: “Weapons supplied by the United States and NATO countries end up in the hands of Hamas, but also drug cartels in Mexico. Imagine that the surface-to-air missiles you supplied to Ukraine are used to shoot down an airliner! »
