WASHINGTON (Agencies): Last year’s US Department of Defense’s inspector general report concluded that the Pentagon faced “challenges” in monitoring all of the American military equipment pouring into Ukraine after the start of the Russian special military operation.
US officials have failed to properly track more than $1 billion in American weapons sent to Ukraine, a new report by the Pentagon’s inspector general has revealed.
The inspector general went on to conclude that the 40,000 weapons may have been stolen or smuggled.
According to the document, the items that are designated for the so-called “enhanced end-use monitoring” (EEUM) include Javelin and Stinger missiles, night-vision goggles, kamikaze drones and advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles.
The Department of Defense’s Office of the Inspector General (DoD OIG) said in a statement that while “delinquency” could suggest the weapons had been stolen or diverted away from Ukraine, it was outside the scope of the Pentagon’s probe to determine what had happened to the arms that were not properly tracked.
The statement comes as White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Thursday that the US assistance for Ukraine “has now ground to a halt.”
In a separate development, independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema said that White House and Senate negotiators are very close to clinching a deal on a supplemental bill to fund the Ukraine aid and the border security, among other national security priorities.
The White House earlier asked Congress to provide more than $100 billion in supplemental funds including more than $60 billion for Ukraine but Republican lawmakers refused to approve it without measures to strengthen border security and restrict immigration.
The US and its allies ramped up their military assistance to Kiev shortly after Russia launched its special military operation in 2022. Moscow has repeatedly warned that NATO countries are “playing with fire” by supplying arms that the Kremlin said adds to prolonging the conflict in Ukraine. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, for his part, underscored that any cargo with weapons for the Zelensky regime would become a legitimate target for Russian forces.