US Military Arms Smuggled to Ukraine During the First Four Months after the Russian Invasion: An Update on the Zlatev-Znubich Campaign

EUREKA, Mo. — After falling out with his partner at a limousine company in the St. Louis suburbs, Martin Zlatev recently sought a lucrative new business opportunity: selling $30 million worth of rockets, grenade launchers and ammunition to the Ukrainian military.

“Time is of the essence,” the pair recently wrote to Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense. They outlined a plan to sell American, Bulgarian and Bosnian arms to Ukraine.

Since the Russian invasion in February, the Biden administration has quietly fast-tracked hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of private arms sales to Ukraine, slashing a weekslong approval process to a matter of hours. In just the first four months of the year — the latest data available — the State Department authorized more than $300 million in private deals to Ukraine, government documents show. During the entire fiscal year that ended on March 31, the department gave away less than fifteen million dollars in such sales to Ukraine.

The US Justice Department has charged five Russian nationals and two US nationals for allegedly conspiring to violate US sanctions by smuggling US-made equipment to the Russian military, according to a recently unsealed indictment.

The seven individuals, Yevgeniy Grinin, Aleksey Ippolitov, Boris Livshits, Svetlana Skvortsova, Vadim Konoshchenok, Alexey Brayman and Vadim Yermolenko, “unlawfully sourced, purchased and shipped millions of dollars in military and sensitive dual-use technologies from US manufacturers and vendors located in the Eastern District of New York and elsewhere for Russian end users,” the indictment said.

Grinin, Skvortsova, Ippolitov and Livshits remain at large, according to the Justice Department, while Brayman, a permanent resident in the US, Yermolenko, a US citizen, and Konoshchenok, a Russian national, are in custody.

The DOJ says that Brayman and Yermolenko could fabricate shipping documents to ship items around the world and then send them to Russia.

The alleged FSB officer was arrested in Estonia last week after allegedly attempting to smuggle twenty cases of US-made sniper rifle ammunition into Russia in late November.

When Estonian law enforcement searched a warehouse allegedly used by Konoshchenok they discovered 375 pounds of US-made ammunition, according to the Justice Department. The proceedings for Konoshchenok to be extradite to the US will begin soon.

The State of Ukraine: CNN’s Coverage of the 2014 Ukrainian MH17 Event and Its Implications for the Foreign Military Intelligence Mission

“At this stage Mr. Brayman has only been charged, he has not been convicted of anything,” Brayman’s attorney, David Lazarus, told CNN. “Like all defendants, Mr. Brayman is entitled to the presumption of innocence.”

In a surprise tour of Europe, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met leaders in London, Paris and Brussels to reiterate his call for allied fighters to be sent to his country.

Russian forces began their next major offensive in the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk, attacking Ukrainian defensive lines and making marginal advances according to the Institute for the Study of War. Analysts at the Atlantic Council also said Russian forces are pushing to encircle Bakhmut, a city in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region.

Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova attended President Biden’s State of the Union speech, for the second year in a row, but the war in Ukraine received far less attention in the address this time.

There’s “strong indication” Russian President Vladimir Putin gave the go-ahead to supply anti-aircraft weapons to separatists in Ukraine, according to the international team investigating the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014.

You can read past recaps here. For context and more in-depth stories, you can find more of NPR’s coverage here. You can listen to State ofUkraine on NPR and receive updates throughout the day.

The comments were made as the Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson was in the United Arab Emare and Turkey to address Russian attempts to evade sanctions and export controls.

“A big piece of this is information and intelligence sharing, which is something we started doing even before Russia’s invasion,” Adeyemo said in an interview with CNN. “So, mapping out an evasion network that allows us to look across jurisdictions to share information, and then take action is a big piece of this.”

The US Treasury Department on Friday took what it called “one of its most significant sanctions actions to date” to crack down on those aiding Moscow’s war against Ukraine, targeting Russia’s metals and mining sector, its financial institutions, its military supply chain and individuals and companies worldwide that are helping Moscow avoid existing sanctions.

“Spending the country’s savings can hide the damage for now, but our actions are forcing Russia to mortgage its economic future to save face today. We will continue to work more until Russia comes to an end its illegal invasion. But one year into this conflict, Russia’s economy looks more like Iran’s than a G-20 country,” Adeyemo will say.

“Last year, rather than the forecasted budget surplus, Russia suffered a budget deficit of $47 billion dollars. This was the second highest deficit the country has experienced in the post-Soviet era. Industrial production has declined in Russia for 9 straight months, and we are planning to take further actions to further decimate the Kremlin’s industrial base,” Adeyemo will say.

Kamala Harris’s Russia-UKraine-crimes-against-humanity: A U.S. Mission to the International Criminal Court

Vice President Harris said Saturday that the U.S. has formally determined that the Russian military’s actions in Ukraine constitute war crimes and demanded that the perpetrators be held accountable by the international community.

She said that the Russians had pursued a “widespread and systemic attack against a civilian population”. The acts of murder, torture, rape, and deportation were heinous. Execution-style killings, beatings, and electrocution. Russian authorities have forcibly deported hundreds of thousands of people form Ukraine to Russia — including children.”

The Secretary of State issued a statement saying the US will work to hold those responsible to account and emphasize the importance of this designation. Blinken is attending the meeting.

Ukranian is not a state party to the treaty that established the International Criminal Court. But the country has exercised its rights to accept the court’s jurisdiction over alleged war crimes occurring within its borders. The prosecutor of the international Criminal Court announced he would seek authorization to investigate war crimes allegations in Ukraine after Russia invaded the country.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/18/1158129496/kamala-harris-russia-ukraine-crimes-against-humanity

Latest Treasury Department Measures to Strengthen Kyiv and Deter the Russian Influence in the Second Year of the Russian-Ukraine War

As tension between the U.S. and China lingers, Blinken is set to meet with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, for talks this weekend in Munich. This will be the highest level of contact between the US and China since the security balloon incident.

The relationship between China and the U.S. has been strained since the February 4 shoot down of a Chinese balloon that flew across the U.S.

Beijing, however, insists that the balloon was a civilian craft used for scientific research, and that shooting it down was an overreaction and a violation of international practice.

The US State Department will be putting constraints on Chinese companies on Friday as part of an effort to make China pay for its involvement in the war in Ukraine.

Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland said that the United States “will be putting other constraints on entities, Chinese-based or Chinese-subs of entities in Europe, which we think are active in evading sanctions,” along with sanctions package that will be announced on Friday – the anniversary of the invasion.

The US has warned Beijing against providing lethal support because the Russians have been asking the Chinese for weapons. This was a key topic of conversation between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and China’s top diplomat Wang Yi in Munich this weekend.

These latest actions by the Treasury Department are among a series of new measures announced by the Biden administration Friday that are meant to strengthen Kyiv and deter those providing support to Moscow as the war enters its second year without signs of abating.

The administration on Friday imposed sanctions against a total of “over 200 individuals and entities, including both Russian and third-country actors across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East that are supporting Russia’s war effort,” according to the White House fact sheet.

The latest tranche of Treasury Department sanctions target a total of 22 individuals and 83 entities, according to a Treasury Department news release, and were taken in coordination with the Group of 7 nations.

“These targets include government ministers, governors, and high-level officials in Russia, as well as six individuals and three entities operating in parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia, facilitating grain theft, and governing on behalf of Russia,” he said.

The ZNPP was taken over by Russia after the State Department sanctioned people involved in the illegitimate control of the plant.

In addition, they hit three companies “involved in expanding Russia’s future energy production and export capacity,” including those “involved in the design and construction of the Sever Bay Terminal as part of the Vostok oil projects,” Blinken said.

The agency also imposed sanctions on Nurmurad Kurbanov, “a Russian-Turkmen arms dealer who has represented Russian and Belarusian defense firms abroad” and Aleksandr Yevgenyevich Udodov, a Russian businessman with ties to Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, who is accused of illicit financial activities.

The latest sanctions hit “numerous Russia-based entities involved in the production of carbon fiber and related materials” – materials that “are used in almost all defense-related platforms including aircraft, ground combat vehicles, ballistic missiles, and military personal protection gear, as well as other weapons systems.” They also imposed sanctions on companies tied to Russia’s aerospace, technology and electronics sectors.