Weapons Sent to Ukraine by West to End Up in Hands of Swedish Gangs, Report Says

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Experts have expressed fears that Ukraine may become a source of more powerful weapons than criminals in Sweden have had access to so far, and that virtually any type of weapon sent as Western aid could come back.

Arms smugglers in Sweden's second-largest city, Gothenburg, have received requests to procure weapons from conflict-ridden Ukraine for further sale to criminals gangs in the Nordic country, Swedish media have reported.

"Why wouldn't a grenade launcher be interesting for a criminal group in Sweden?" weapons smuggling expert at the Swedish Customs Service Jesper Liedholm asked rhetorically in an interview with the country's media.

He expressed fears that more powerful weapons than criminals in Sweden have had access to so far, may be smuggled in and that virtually any type of weapon provided to Ukraine as Western aid may come back. Nils Duquet, international arms smuggling expert at the Flemish Peace Research Institute in Brussels, emphasized that the European countries need to be prepared for a spike in smuggled arms in the wake of the conflict, and that weapons from the black market can end up in the criminal world.

Russian political leaders and Interpol officials alike have for months warned that weapons sent to Ukraine are likely to slip through on the black market and end up in the hands of organized criminals in Europe and beyond.

So far, however, Western governments have failed to heed this advice and continue to pump Ukraine with all sorts of arms and gear. Nevertheless, arms from Ukraine have already sufaced across the globe, popping up in countries from Finland to the Sahel region in Africa and nations around the Chad basin. In late 2022, the Finnish police reported "huge quantities" of weapons shipped to Ukraine having made their way into the Nordic country.

Sweden has been experiencing problems with gang violence for the past two decades, and the problem has been picking up steam in recent years. Earlier, the national police identified dozens of organized gangs active in Sweden, numbering as many as 5,000 active gang members organizing themselves along ethnic lines. Internal mob feuds, drug deals and a violent redistribution of power in the underworld were singled out as a common factor behind the country's multiple shootings and explosions.

In 2021, Sweden became the only European country where fatal shootings have soared since 2000, causing it to jump from one of the lowest rates of gun violence in Europe to one of the highest in less than a decade, overtaking Italy, the Balkans and Eastern Europe, a report by the Swedish national council for crime prevention found.

In 2022, fatal shootings in Sweden hit a record high of 61 — six times more than neighboring Denmark, Finland and Norway combined.

This gangland violence is fueled by an extensive influx of arms from abroad. The Swedish Customs Service estimated that approximately three firearms are smuggled into the Nordic country every day, and that smugglers often using ingenious ways to hide them, such as baking weapons in loaves of bread. Previously, the Balkans and Eastern Europe were seen as a key source of illegal firearms.

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who leads an embattled minority government dependent on external support, specifically campaigned to tackle organized crime, promising to "straighten out Sweden." Among other things, Kristersson envisaged a "paradigm shift" in criminal justice and promised that longer prison sentences would remove gang members from the streets and deter would-be recruits from joining the underworld. So far, however, the anticipated turnaround has yet to materialize.