From a long investigative report “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 marked Europe’s single-biggest weapons procurement rush since the second world war. While Ukraine’s Nato allies delivered vast amounts of military aid, the country’s own officials were also forced to find ways to supply troops fighting across a 1,000-kilometre front line. A Financial Times investigation, based on leaked Ukrainian state documents, court filings and dozens of interviews with procurement officials, weapons dealers and manufacturers, and detectives, has uncovered how hundreds of millions of dollars Kyiv paid to foreign arms intermediaries to secure vital military equipment has gone to waste over the past three years of war. “As Ukraine continues to battle against Russia’s ammunition production superiority, the country has been left exposed to the ruthless vagaries of the international weapons market. In several cases Kyiv paid out large amounts in advance to little-known companies for materiel that to t...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51