I've been writing for the past two years about the questions of accountability in terms of the weapons and equipment being sent to Ukraine, and how there was a big problem tracking the weapons that were being sent to the war-torn nation. 

DoD IG Report Shows Big Problem Tracking Weapons Given to Ukraine, Criminal Gangs Grabbing Some

Troubling Questions About How Many of Our Weapons Are Going to Ukraine and If They're Getting to the Frontlines

I wrote what Sec. of Defense Lloyd Austin -- yes, he of the present controversy -- said about this back in May 2022. 

You’re going to love Austin’s response to that question. He said, “It was difficult to track weapons once they were moved into Ukraine.”

“We have to depend on the Ukrainians at this point to do the right thing and make sure that they are prudent and careful about how they issue these weapons out and account for these weapons,” he said.

Oh. That sounded like another way of saying you can't track where things are going, if you're saying you have to depend on the Ukrainians to do the right thing when Ukraine is a festival of corruption. 

Then last July, I wrote how some of the material was ending up in the hands of criminal gangs. 

Now there's a new report that the problem is even worse than previously described. 

More than $1 billion in military weapons and equipment that the United States has provided Ukraine to fight invading Russian forces cannot be accounted for and is not being fully tracked, according to a Pentagon audit released Thursday.

Since the Russian invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has been given roughly $45 billion in U.S. military aid that has included a wide range of weapons such as air-defense systems, anti-drone systems, various missiles and rockets and small-arms ammunition. The Defense Department inspector general concluded in the report that about $1 billion in weapons that are required to be tracked have not been.

It involves some 40,000 weapons. The audit didn't say what happened to the weapons, saying that was beyond their scope to assess. 

The untracked weapons are subject to what the Pentagon calls enhanced end-use monitoring, or EEUM, requirements. Equipment that falls under the EEUM category requires heightened accountability and security due to its sensitive technology and smaller size, which makes it more appealing to arms traffickers.

But the DOD wasn't properly accounting for the material, not complying "with the EEUM program requirements for defense article accountability in a hostile environment.”

“This occurred for multiple reasons, including the limited number of [U.S.] personnel at logistics hubs in a partner nation and in Ukraine, the absence of procedures for conducting EEUM in a hostile environment until December 2022, the movement restrictions for EEUM personnel within Ukraine and a lack of internal controls,” the report reads.

The inspector general’s report makes several recommendations to improve accountability for EEUM weapons sent to Ukraine. They include improving inventory processes to keep track of the hardware, improving “timely and accurate reporting” for the weapons, better documentation of third- party transfers, putting serial numbers of all EEUM weapons in a central database and adding internal controls to verify that the database is updated within a required time.

Whoops. If they're not able to account for them, they could have gone anywhere, including to the gangs or Russia. On top of that, this has been going on for two years and they still haven't dealt with the issues. Indeed, they act aggrieved that people are calling them on it. 

According to Alexandra Baker, acting undersecretary of defense for policy, "‘full accounting’ of EEUM articles in the manner described is an unrealistic and unobtainable expectation.” 

Then this is what National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said when asked about the report, "We're interested in accountability." 

How nice to know when Joe Biden is "interested in accountability," after two years of having this problem identified. These people just have no shame at all. Things are not being properly accounted for but hey, you can't expect us to keep track of things.

Yet Biden wants us to give billions more. He has a pending request to Congress even in the face of this report. No new aid has been approved yet.