All the ingredients are there for a proper arms deal: A former government official with connections to the military-industrial complex. A stockpile of Soviet arms in Ukraine. Soldiers in Syria with a yen for ammo and cash to burn. The biggest problem? Getting the arms from eastern Europe to the battleground without alerting international authorities or tipping off your enemies.
The story isn’t about Russia or the United States. It’s about Russia and the United States.
This week, the Wall Street Journal shone a light (paywall) on
one American’s thwarted effort to run guns into Syria for the
anti-regime Free Syrian Army. Last fall, analysts at the Center for
Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS) in Washington assembled public data to identify a network of businesses (pdf)
in Ukraine and Russia at the heart of Russia’s efforts to arm the
Syrian regime. The two stories have a lot in common, with a key
difference being that Russia’s government is a lot more invested in
arming its side of the conflict.
