Posobiec details civilian trade in arms, humanitarian aid in Ukraine

In the podcast, Posobiec recounted what he saw on the ground, including war torn areas, as well as towns and cities that have been converted into defensive outposts, filled with young volunteers ready to protect their country, seeing "small villages with defensive outposts, barricades, volunteers" standing guard, armed with AK47s.

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"And along the way, even at that point, the minute that we crossed from Ukraine into Poland, we immediately started seeing these small villages with defensive outposts, barricades, volunteers of people standing guard at the the entrance road to that village, or that settlement... Armed with AK47s, sometimes wearing uniform, some times wearing kind of makeshift uniforms, and soldiers just everywhere, soldiers on the train, soldiers running the customs checkpoint at the border."

Posobiec also talked about how soldiers had taken over basically all aspects of life in Ukraine, with the military presence being understandably strong.

"Soldiers were ubiquitous throughout the entire time that we traveled in and around Ukraine," said Posobiec. "Obviously, as you can imagine, they've considerably beefed up their numbers and beefed up their active presence patrols in order to protect against behind-the-scenes or behind the lines activity, being on the lookout for spies being on the lookout for subversives, that type of thing. And so really, the military presence with those ubiquitous golden armbands was just everywhere throughout Ukraine."

Later in the podcast, Posobiec provided details of a civilian arms trade that may have been a scam involving AR15 rifles.

May 31, 2022

"So, we decided to end up going to Odessa. But after meeting with some of the local activists and kind of seeing some of the situations that were there, you know, you're hearing these stories about this humanitarian aid coming in through Lviv from the West, but really, it just seemed like such a hodgepodge and a patchwork of efforts on the volunteer front and humanitarian front," he explained, saying that most of the supplies were bandages, tourniquets, and other urgent care needs.

"So, you know, piles of tourniquets, and quick clot and bandages just stacked up on a guy's living room couch. And... Americans saying, 'Oh, I'm gonna load up my car and drive it down to the people who need it.' And so your question, of course, is, well, 'where's the normal supply line? where's the where's the regular supply chain? Why are you driving it directly and taking that risk on?'"

Posobiec said that it was either that "the supply chain wasn't working" or that they "were told a story from a guy who was able to procure AR-15s from a Polish arms dealer, obviously much more expensive than usual," and trade them, bring them into Ukraine across the border, "then hand them to a local defense unit that wanted them for defense round Kyiv.

"And this was a group of Ukrainian volunteers. And so the contact was saying 'all right, well, let me see if I can get you weapons, but I'm not sure if I can get the AR is because we've sold so many of them lately, but I can definitely get you AK47s,' but then this group suddenly said, 'Well, if you can't get ARs, then we don't want them' and they said 'okay, fine.'

"Then," Posobiec continued, "they turned around saying 'Oh, you know what, though, we're going to need some of these ARs for defense of our apartment building in Kyiv in case the Russians come there,' which, of course Kyiv is a city of, you know, 3 million people. So if the Russians are there to the point that they're at your house in an apartment building in downtown Kyiv, you're gonna need something a little more powerful than AR15 at that point.

"But what the guy said back to the contact was, you know, we we also need some humanitarian aid here in Kyiv... which course raise a bit of a red flag, 'what do you mean, your your volunteer defense, you know, what do you mean, you need humanitarian aid?'

"And then they said, 'Well, can you just cut us a check for about 100,000 hryvnia?'" to which Posobiec responded, "'What do you mean 100,000?'" And then it dawned on him, that about 100,000 hryvnia was the price for, and they had been discussing, five AR15s. So 20,000 hryvnia each.

"So basically, what he thinks had been happening was that the thing was a scam," Posobiec explained. "And they were trying to get the ARs off of him so that they could sell them and then pocket the money in the middle, but because he was saying 'no,' that 'perhaps the guy, these guys had already promised people that they were going to be getting the ARs and if they didn't get them, then they obviously had a problem on their hands.' So they were hoping to buy their way out of that problem by getting whatever money they had been fronted up front for the AR, so asking for the money for the exact price of about five AR15s.

"Lviv is where the supplies come in through the west, and then they are distributed throughout the country following that, whether by hook or by crook, networks of journalists and activists... that are working together to put this whole thing together... to people who are fighting at the front," he said.