Ukrainian servicemen load a truck with Javelin anti-tank missiles.
The US has few ways to track the
substantial supply of anti-tank, anti-aircraft and other weaponry it has sent across the border into Ukraine, sources tell CNN, a blind spot that's due in large part to the lack of US boots on the ground in the country -- and the easy portability of many of the smaller systems now pouring across the border.
It's a conscious risk the Biden administration is willing to take.
In the short term, the US sees the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of equipment to be vital to the Ukrainians' ability to hold off Moscow's invasion. A senior defense official said Tuesday that it is "certainly the largest recent supply to a partner country in a conflict."
But the risk, both current US officials and defense analysts say, is that in the long term, some of those weapons may wind up in the hands of other militaries and militias that the US did not intend to arm."We have fidelity for a short time, but when it enters the fog of war, we have almost zero," said one source briefed on US intelligence.
"It drops into a big black hole, and you have almost no sense of it at all after a short period of time."
Comment: RFE/RL reports on the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry's comments about the situation in Mariupol: Evidently any civilians that remain trapped is likely due to the Ukrainian military preventing them from leaving, because, as even propaganda outlet RFE/RL admits, Russia is doing its utmost to evacuate civilians so that it can finish the job.
RT reports: RT reports that Zelensky has said that they're still 'hoping for a victory at Mariupol'... they just needs foreign help to resuce the encircled neo-Nazis: Also check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal: Shanghai Lockdown - Moskva Hit - Escalation in Ukraine?