ISLAMABAD: Revelations about Pakistan’s purported ammunition sales worth $364 million to private US companies supplying arms to Kyiv have raised doubts about Islamabad’s stated position of neutrality on the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
BBC Urdu reported Monday that Pakistan had signed the arms sales contracts in August 2022 with two private US military companies, Global Military and Northrop Grumman, under which the Islamic nation sold them 155-mm ammunition.
The contracts were split at $232 million for Global and $131 million for Northrop Grumman, according to the US Federal Procurement Data System. The contracts expired last month.
A fact-checker named “Soch” recently claimed Pakistan was sending weapons to Ukraine through these US firms. Some news outlets have in the recent past come up with similar claims, but no concrete evidence has surfaced so far.
Pakistan has often reiterated that it is completely “neutral” in Kyiv’s conflict with Moscow but has not ruled out the possibility of these weapons reaching Ukraine from the black market.
But the questions have not gone away, fuelled also by a purported official document of the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, or USAI, on the $364-million ammunition sales. Pakistan’s overall arms exports zoomed over 30 times to $415 million in 2022-23 from $13 million in 2021-22.
BBC Urdu reported Monday that Pakistan had signed the arms sales contracts in August 2022 with two private US military companies, Global Military and Northrop Grumman, under which the Islamic nation sold them 155-mm ammunition.
The contracts were split at $232 million for Global and $131 million for Northrop Grumman, according to the US Federal Procurement Data System. The contracts expired last month.
A fact-checker named “Soch” recently claimed Pakistan was sending weapons to Ukraine through these US firms. Some news outlets have in the recent past come up with similar claims, but no concrete evidence has surfaced so far.
Pakistan has often reiterated that it is completely “neutral” in Kyiv’s conflict with Moscow but has not ruled out the possibility of these weapons reaching Ukraine from the black market.
But the questions have not gone away, fuelled also by a purported official document of the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, or USAI, on the $364-million ammunition sales. Pakistan’s overall arms exports zoomed over 30 times to $415 million in 2022-23 from $13 million in 2021-22.
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