The arrest in Kuwait of a Lebanese man with ties to the Islamic State has raised the specter that Ukraine's notorious illicit arms market may be a source of weapons for the the militant group.
One senior Ukrainian official with access to intelligence agency reports told Mashable on Friday that it is "plausible" the man, arrested by Kuwaiti authorities on Thursday, had obtained FN-6 surface-to-air missile systems he admitted to getting from a broker in Ukraine. Calling news of the arrest "interesting," the official stopped short of giving a definitive answer to a question about whether Kiev had direct information about the arms sale in question.
ISIS has carried out deadly attacks with a variety of weapons in Egypt, Lebanon and France in the past three weeks, raising questions about how the assailants were able to acquire arms that are banned throughout much of Europe.
Kuwaiti security officials said that they had busted an extremist cell led by a Lebanese citizen using the name Osama Khayat, the Associated Press reported. Khayat, officials claimed, admitted to getting the Chinese-made missile systems in Ukraine to send through Turkey to Islamic State (ISIS) fighters in Syria. It is not known where exactly in Ukraine Khayat allegedly secured the weapons.
Kuwaiti police arrested Khayat along with five other men, including three Syrians, one of whom was a known arms dealer for ISIS and another who was in charge of finances and communication, according to AFP. An Egyptian and a Kuwaiti were also taken into custody, while four others -- two Syrians and two Australians of Lebanese origin -- were outside Kuwait, said Kuwait's interior Ministry.
Besides arms trafficking, the group is alleged to have helped ISIS recruit fighters and raise money that was sent to ISIS-related bank accounts in Turkey.
Weapons in Ukraine 'disappear all the time'
FN-6 shoulder-fired missile systems, manufactured by China, have never been sold to Ukraine, nor has the government given permission for their transit through its territory, the Ukrainian defense ministry said in a statement on Friday. And there have been no documented reports of the the FN-6 shoulder-fired missile systems appearing in Ukraine since the war began in April 2014.
But that doesn't mean the weapons couldn't have been transported into the country another way, the senior official admitted, adding that Kiev has monitored the illicit trafficking of weapons to and from separatist-controlled territories since the start of the war, and that it "really struggles" to stem the "heavy" flow.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because security services are not allowed to speak to media about the issue.
A second senior Ukrainian official, from the country's security services, said "Russian aggression has created a huge black market in the occupied regions, first of all in Donetsk and Luhansk," where Ukrainian forces are fighting a war against Russian-backed separatists.
Even before the war, Ukraine was known to be home to a massive illegal arms trade, something that Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said has increased considerably since the war broke out in the country's eastern regions.
It's something that Russia, too, is well aware of.
"The separatist regions of Ukraine have become a territory of uncontrolled weapons circulation and arms always flow into the black market in a period of de-escalation," Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Bloomberg.
There is no security presence along a span of hundreds of miles of Ukraine's easternmost border in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, allowing for easy, unchecked passage.
According to Russia's government newspaper, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, there were around 60 attempts by smugglers to traffic arms into the country between January and May this year.
But on both sides of the battle lines, weapons have a way of disappearing in Ukraine, where corruption remains rampant, an Ukrainian security official told Mashable in June.
"Weapons can disappear all the time," possibly falling into the hands of extremist groups, said the official. "We have seen the black arms market flourish since the start of the war in Donbass," the official said, using the colloquial term for eastern Ukraine.
Additional reporting by the Associated Press.