Weapons and ammunition from Ukraine ending up on the black market?

In early March, members of the Spanish National Police searched a forest area near Marbella in search of a cocaine cache. A chase ensued.

Drug dealers, disguised as police officers, fired at officers with automatic pistols. AK-47 rifles, among other weapons, were found in their vehicles, the National Police later said in a statement.

"We cannot defend ourselves"

According to investigators from Spain who were interviewed by journalists from the ARD political magazine Report Mainz, this is clearly not an isolated case. Almost every week, modern military weapons and ammunition are seized during raids, in addition to cocaine.

For police officers, this is a growing problem: "As ordinary police, we cannot defend ourselves against this type of war weapon. We only have standard pistols," says police officer Oscar Sanchez.

German journalists met with a weapons expert from the National Police at a popular tourist destination, a beach near Cadiz. There, operations are regularly carried out against armed drug couriers who bring cocaine to Andalusia by speedboat – and are increasingly arming themselves.

Sanchez shows off a seized 5,56mm bullet – it's standard NATO ammunition.

"Drug gangs use this type of ammunition. It comes from Eastern Europe, from the war in Ukraine," Sanchez estimates.

Another investigator expresses similar suspicions. Agustin David Dominguez, a union representative in the Spanish police, is convinced:

"Weapons are generally not traceable, but ammunition is easier to trace. And it often comes from the war in Ukraine."

These claims cannot be independently verified.

Do weapons of war end up on the black market?

These discoveries raise a sensitive question: are weapons and ammunition from Ukrainian battlefields ending up on the European black market?

Not only in Spain, but throughout Europe, police regularly seize large weapons depots, including military weapons, during raids.

For the purposes of research by German journalists, ammunition and explosives expert Marko Polers analyzed footage of such operations. Polers is a former member of the German special forces unit KSK (Kommando Spezialkräfte).

In photos published in the media from a raid in Hungary in July 2022, he identified a modernized Russian AK-47 assault rifle.

"This weapon is definitely intended for the military market," says Polers.

According to his assessment, such weapons are currently easiest to obtain in Ukraine, for example from fallen soldiers. The Kalashnikov AK-47 is the standard assault rifle of the former Eastern Bloc countries and has been produced in millions. Ukraine's allies supplied it during the first days of the war.

Many of these rifles, he claims, were not adequately registered at the beginning of the war, so some ended up in illegal sales.

Warnings given soon after the war began

This danger is also seen by political officials in Germany, but also at the European Union level, as shown by confidential correspondence between Brussels and Berlin, as well as Europol reports obtained by German journalists. As early as May 2022, just a few months after the start of the war, Europol told government representatives that “illegal trade has already begun and could increase further.”

In July 2022, the deputy director of the European border protection agency, Frontex, warned before the Bundestag's Home Affairs Committee:

"There is currently almost unlimited access to weapons of war in Ukraine. We assume, and there are initial indications, that criminals are smuggling these weapons into the European Union."

"Control mechanisms are missing"

German terrorism expert Hans-Jakob Schindler believes that weapons supplied by the Allies to Ukraine are indeed ending up on the black market. He accuses EU member states of covering up the problem.

"No government that sends weapons to a conflict zone – not even the German federal government – ​​wants to admit that its weapons are being used for something other than the purpose for which they were delivered."

According to him, a large concentration of weapons in crisis areas always attracts criminals, as previous conflicts in Lebanon and Afghanistan have shown.

The problem, he says, is that not enough has been learned from these experiences: "Control mechanisms are missing."

For example, there is no common database with the serial numbers of all weapons delivered to Ukraine, Schindler criticizes. This makes it almost impossible to track their movements.

No systematic comparative review of data is possible in the EU

Investigators in Spain also complain that weapons, despite serial numbers, are often impossible to trace. The main problem is the lack of common access to lists of serial numbers at EU level. In addition, much of the key information is marked as confidential.

Diplomatic documents obtained by German journalists also point to the same problem. An internal document from the Foreign Ministry in Berlin from February 2024 states that, according to Europol, when exchanging data in the EU, "systematic comparisons of data are not possible."

Another document shows that the European IT agency responsible for this area also considers firearms smuggling a huge challenge.

While there are around 35 million illegal weapons in circulation in Europe, only 620.000 cases are registered in the Schengen Information System.

"Tracing the origin is difficult"

In response to a query from German journalists, the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) responded to the Ministry of the Interior in Berlin. It confirmed that there is a problem: due to a lack of markings and incomplete registers, tracing the origin of firearms is significantly more difficult.

The BKA also states that it mainly relies on internal databases and publicly available sources.

Konstantin von Noz, a Green MP in the Bundestag who is responsible for security issues in the opposition parliamentary group, is therefore asking the German government to accelerate the development of common European databases. He cites the Netherlands as an example.

A special system, the so-called “Black Box,” has been developed there. With it, investigators can check serial numbers and get a clear answer as to whether a particular weapon was delivered to Ukraine – a simple “yes” or “no.” This provides a starting point for further investigation.

However, Dutch weapons experts, such as police officer Richard Martens, believe that introducing such a system at the EU level would be very difficult.

"At this point, we are not able to build such a database," says Martens.