Weapons abandoned by the Russian occupiers are collected by local residents and sold to criminals.
The SBU exposed four black gunsmiths who were selling “captured” Russian weapons and explosives to criminals in three regions of Ukraine. The SBU press center reported this on Thursday, March 14.
Among the items seized from the criminals were more than 60 kg of explosives, sniper weapons, as well as heavy machine guns and the latest Russian-made machine guns.
In the Kharkov region, a man was detained red-handed for trying to sell an entire arsenal of military weapons to criminals.
The attacker kept the weapon in an underground cache, which he set up in a forest plantation in the de-occupied Izyum district. During the inspection of the cache, the following was discovered: several boxes with TNT and plastid; Dragunov sniper rifle; ammunition for grenade launchers and the Fagot anti-tank missile system; more than 13 thousand rounds of various calibers. According to the investigation, the defendant took the discovered weapons to a cache from the former locations of Russian troops during the battles for Kharkov.
Several more arsenals were discovered near Kiev, left behind by the occupiers who fled the Kiev region in the spring of 2022. In the Buchansky district, a Russian BRDM with a heavy machine gun was found in one of the caches in an abandoned garage, and more than 150 rounds for grenade launchers and 15 Russian-made combat grenades were found nearby in an underground cache.
In the Dnepropetrovsk region, a local resident was detained who was trying to sell a Kalashnikov light machine gun and was looking for potential clients among representatives of criminal circles. And during the search, they found two AK-74 assault rifles, four live grenades and more than 1.3 thousand rounds of various calibers.
The defendants were informed of suspicion and face up to 7 years in prison.
