Department of Defense officials insist there is no evidence of diversion or misuse of the billions of dollars in American weapons and security assistance that has been sent to Ukraine during its war with Russia.
The House Armed Services Committee held a hearing Tuesday questioning defense officials on Ukraine’s usage of weapons and the potential that billions in aid from the United States to the war-torn country could be, or has been, misused or untracked.
Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., asked defense officials about the importance of tracking the weapons and equipment being sent to Ukraine, asking whether they believe U.S. inspectors should be on the ground to keep track of the shipments to the country.
Responding to Johnson, Colin Kahl, who serves as undersecretary of defense for policy, said: “First of all, we’re not just taking the Ukrainians words for it. They provide us information on their inventories, their transfer logs. We have provided them handheld scanners. That data gets transmitted directly back to us so we can keep custody.
Colin Kahl, undersecretary of defense for policy, said Tuesday the DOD is “not seeing any evidence of systemic diversion of the equipment that the United States has provided” to Ukraine. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“We have shared NATO standard inventory and logistic software … and, of course, we do have a presence at the embassy. We have an office of defense cooperation, and they have done six different site visits out from Kyiv. These are day trips. It’s a dangerous place, and we don’t have outposts across the country. And they have seen no signs of diversion or that the Ukrainians are not following procedure.”
Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., asked the officials about the confidence from the Defense Department that weapons being sent to Ukraine are being used for their intended purposes and not sold on secondary markets.
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“What we’re not seeing is any evidence of significant diversion,” Kahl told Sherrill. “I think our assessment is if some of these systems have been diverted, it’s by Russians who have captured things on the battlefield, which always happens. But there’s no evidence that the Ukrainians are diverting it to the black market. … That’s not surprising, given the intensity of the fight and the fact that…
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