The US Central Command has announced, ‘The US has transferred more than 5,000 AK-47s, rocket launchers and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition seized from Iran to Ukraine as it aims to defend against Russia’.
Ukraine has been struggling with severe shortages of weapons and munitions on the battlefield in its war against Russia, with the US not able to send more equipment from its stockpiles until more funding is accepted by the much-divided Congress.
The US government transferred over 5,000 AK-47s, machine guns, sniper rifles, RPG-7s and over 500,000 rounds of 7.62mm ammunition to the Ukrainian armed forces on April 4.
The material transferred to Ukraine is enough to provide one Ukrainian brigade of around 4,000 personnel with small-arms rifles.
On Tuesday CENTCOM said, ‘These weapons will help Ukraine defend against Russia’s invasion’.
On December 1, 2023, the US government got ownership of these munitions through the Department of Justice’s civil forfeiture claims against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The statement said, ‘The munitions were seized by the US military and its partners from four separate transiting stateless vessels between 22 May 2021 to 15 Feb 2023’.
In October, the US transferred over one million rounds of seized Iranian ammunition to the Ukrainian armed forces.
Over the past year, The US Navy has seized thousands of Iranian assault rifles and more than one million rounds of ammunition from vessels used by Iran to ship weapons to the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. The seizures carried out with regional partner forces, target small stateless vessels on routes historically used to smuggle weapons to the Houthis.
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