Kiev Regime Using Grain Shipping to Smuggle in More Weapons

Friday, August 12, 2022

Drago Bosnic, independent geopolitical and military analyst

In the last more than 5 months, we have seen a dramatic upsurge in the political West’s “concern” for the export of grains and other food commodities from the areas under the control of the Kiev regime, all under the convenient pretext of “feeding the world”. It was an almost perfect cover for the fact that various Western corporations own over 17 million hectares of arable land in Ukraine, which is approximately 30% of the country’s fertile soil. In order to meet their ever-increasing “altruistic need to feed the world”, the political West wanted to make sure it could have at least some return on investment from the arable land it “legally acquired” in Ukraine. The actual problem of getting the food commodities out of Ukraine came from the self-imposed naval blockade which lasted for months. The political West, never the ones to let a good propaganda narrative go to waste, accused Russia of conducting a naval blockade of ports still under the Kiev regime’s control.

The mainstream media kept parroting the same line over and over, while they themselves still published information on how the leftovers of the Kiev regime naval forces released thousands of sea mines, some of which ended up drifting away as far as the Bosporus. Despite all the propaganda and blatant lies by the Western mainstream media, Russia still accepted to negotiate a deal which would allow uninterrupted shipping of grain out of Ukraine. The deal, jointly brokered by Ankara and the UN, was signed in Istanbul, on July 22. However, it now seems that Russia’s willingness to cooperate even under these conditions has been (ab)used once again. A number of recent reports indicate that the ships moving in and out of the ports under the Kiev regime control are very likely carrying “inedible cargo” – weapons and ammunition for the Kiev regime forces.

In months prior to the signing of the grain deal, the Russian Ministry of Defense raised the possibility of abusing grain shipping to smuggle in weapons for the Kiev regime forces. In order to avoid this possibility, a clear export scheme was discussed, which would involve multiple parties. For instance, the Turkish military was to clear the ports under the Kiev regime’s control of all naval mines and make it possible for the ships stranded in those ports to move out and other cargo vessels to move in and start loading the “much-needed grain” or more precisely, the “indispensable” profits for Western corporations. The ships loaded with grain were to be escorted to international waters and then led to the Bosporus by Russian Black Sea ships.

“Russia shows that food is not a weapon and [that] it does not use it as a weapon [against] other nations, so it is very important to conduct these negotiations,” Turkish MP Ozturk Yilmaz said back in July.

And yet, it seems the political West and its favorite Neo-Nazi puppet regime have only weapons in mind. As Russia has been successfully targeting NATO weapons and ammunition deliveries through land routes in western areas of Ukraine, the belligerent US-led alliance had to find alternatives. The weapons supplies would be much easier to hide in large cargo ships returning to ports under the Kiev regime’s control, where those weapons and ammunition could be offloaded and then have the ships loaded with grain again. It’s almost a perfect scheme, as it’s logistically impossible for Russia to inspect every Ukraine-bound cargo ship, which is giving both the political West and the Neo-Nazi junta more than enough maneuvering space to smuggle virtually anything into the areas under the Kiev regime’s control.

In recent weeks, the Kiev regime forces have escalated their attacks using the US-supplied HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems. The Russian Aerospace Forces, in coordination with Russian intelligence services, have successfully been targeting these weapons and ammunition supplies. However, it is still unclear where so much ammunition for the HIMARS MLRS comes from. Although the possibility of it being stored in Ukraine before Russia intervened should not be entirely excluded, what’s more likely is that ships were used to secretly transfer it.

“The Russian side, not unreasonably, assumes that ships that will enter the ports of Ukraine may bring weapons with them, because any weapon that comes to Ukraine means a lot of deaths. Our task is to prevent Ukraine from pumping itself with weapons, there is enough of it anyway,” expert Anatoly Tikhonov noted.

Another aspect of the grain deal which could also hurt Russia is the fact that the Kiev regime could demands weapons in exchange for grain, effectively making it possible for the Neo-Nazi junta to acquire even more weapons. In addition, the disturbing scenarios of the Kiev regime getting more weapons get even more distressing when taking into account where the weapons might end up

Source: InfoBrics