MOSCOW, February 26. /TASS/. An estimated two to five million unregistered weapons are now in the hands of ordinary Ukrainians, Interior Minister Igor Klimenko has said.
"How many weapons there are out there exactly, we don't know. A million, two million… From one million to five million. Let's split the difference - about three million," he said in an interview with Ukrainian journalist Natalia Moseychuk, uploaded to the YouTube platform.
Klimenko explained that he was referring to weapons handed out to Ukrainian citizens after February 2022, as well as those that they brought from the war zone. Under a bill being drafted, civilians will be obliged to hand in the weapons or register them within 90 days following the end of martial law. Klimenko said the purpose of the bill was to ensure that unregistered weapons do not end up in the hands of criminals.
The interior minister acknowledged that recently Ukraine has seen a surge in weapons-related crimes. He predicts this trend will continue.
Unaccounted weapons in Ukraine
Recently, Ukrainian media have reported on domestic grenade explosions in Ukrainians’ homes or in public places. One of the most high-profile cases occurred on December 15, 2023, when a member of one of the village councils in the Transcarpathian Region came to a meeting with three grenades and set them off, killing 2 and injuring more than 20 others, including himself.
The head of Ukraine’s National Police Ivan Vygovsky said earlier that police had begun to confiscate far more weapons than before from civilians, and not only ammunition and small arms, but also grenades and explosives. Vygovsky went on to say that the automatic rifles that had been handed out to the population by the Interior Ministry will not be taken back until the end of martial law.
In February 2022, the Ukrainian authorities began to distribute weapons to anyone who wished to have them. On March 4, 2022, President Vladimir Zelensky signed a law letting Ukrainian and foreign civilians use firearms during "national resistance." On March 15 of the same year, the Interior Ministry reported that "tens of thousands of automatic rifles" had been distributed to civilians. At the same time, the Ukrainian media said that gangs of armed robbers were terrorizing many cities. In early 2023, the authorities in some regions called on locals to hand in their weapons, but to little avail, if at all.