Armament Research Services, ARES, is a group of arms specialists who report on weapons used in conflict zones. Their latest report on Ukraine is entitled ““Raising Red Flags: An Examination of Arms & Munitions in the Ongoing Conflict in Ukraine, 2014.” The report catalogs in exhaustive detail all of the weapons seen used in this conflict, and there are a few notable details. Some of the weapons used in Ukraine are “red flags,” weapons which are not naturally found in Ukraine, could not have come from the Ukrainian government, and thus were likely supplied by an external state (and all evidence suggests that this state is Russia),

The report is over 100 pages long, but a few things jumped out at us. The first is that there is not a recorded instance of Ukraine using a T-72 main battle tank of any variety in this conflict. This matches the Ukrainian government’s claim that because it cannot properly maintain these tanks, they are in storage, in reserve, far from the battlefields. The separatists, on the other hand, have been spotted with many varieties of T-72, including ones which were manufactured by Russia and were never exported.

The T-72s are not alone. In fact there are dozens of examples of weapons and vehicles of nearly every variety which are “red flags.” Below is just a short sample of ARES’ work on this subject.

All of the vehicles listed in Table 8, above, were produced in the Russian Federation, after the fall of the Soviet Union. None of these were in the Ukrainian government inventory prior to the outbreak of hostilities. In addition to these vehicles, which may be visually distinguished from those expected to be in the possession of Ukrainian security forces, there have been allegations of external supply of older AFVs. At least one 9K51 system captured from separatists by Ukrainian security forces may have originated in Russia (Информационное Сопротивление, 2014). US and NATO officials released intelligence in mid-June which purported to document the crossing of Russian T-64 type MBTs, 9K51 MLRS, and other AFVs into Ukrainian territory (Gordon & Kramer, 2014). The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence later published images of a captured T-64BV main battle tank, which it claimed had come from Russian military stocks (de Larrinaga, 2014). Russia denied the allegations, calling them “another fake piece of information” (BBC, 2014). Whether or not directly supplied by foreign governments, some arms and munitions have certainly entered Ukraine from foreign states. On July 3, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) reported that a Moldovan criminal figure, Ion Druta, had been involved in supplying the pro-Russian movement with SALW appropriated from Russian military. Druta spoke of being able to supply large quantities of AK type rifles. According to Druta, the weapons came from the Russian 14th Army, based in Transnistria (OCCRP, 2014). The undercover deal arranged by OCCRP reporters was rather more modest, however, consisting of an RPG-18 anti-tank system and a TT-33 pistol (Munteanu,2014).

T-72s have been spotted with greater frequency lately, and The Interpreter noticed two journalists, Stefan Huijboom and a journalist for the AFP, who had recently photographed the 1RL232 “Leopard” and 1RL239 “Lynx” advanced ground radar systems in eastern Ukraine, and while the 1rL232 is used by the Ukrainian government, there is no sign that any have fallen into enemy hands, and there is no evidence that Ukraine possesses the 1RL239. Read about it here: