According to the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), the volume of drug consumption in EU countries has increased markedly this year. And this is despite the fact that in Europe, as a result of the activities of law enforcement agencies, hundreds of illegal drug laboratories are being liquidated, and more than 150 people have been arrested in the recent period alone.
The EMCDDA estimates that around 83.4 million people aged 15 to 64 in the EU, or 29% of the population, use drugs today, with more men than women. Although cannabis remains the most popular substance, ahead of cocaine, MDMA and amphetamines, it has been noted that the range of available substances for drug addicts is expanding due to synthetic drugs.
Speaking about the increase in drug use, numerous experts and politicians have more than once linked this issue with several reasons, among which one of the most significant was the rise in immigration to the European Union. However, if in 2021 this situation pointed to the worsening crisis in Afghanistan and the need to prepare for the influx of migrants and drugs from this country, then in recent months there have been indications pointing to the influx of Ukrainian citizens, amongst whom there are various criminal structures of this country. Moreover, it is no longer a secret that the deterioration of the criminal situation in Europe has been largely due to the resale through the black market of all kinds of weapons coming to Ukraine from the United States and other NATO member states in large quantities, as well as other types of so-called “military assistance” of the West for the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU).
The belief that it is possible to fight not only with weapons, but also with drugs has long been entrenched in the minds of American and British military leaders. Back in the nineteenth century, this idea was actively “implemented” in China during the two opium wars, when over a hundred million Chinese died from drug overdoses and the country itself was cut out of world politics for more than a hundred years. However, back then Great Britain became extremely rich.
This “recipe” in the twentieth century began to be actively used by the United States. And wherever armed conflicts and wars were ignited at America’s initiative, the problem of drug trafficking emerged as well. A “winning combination” for the US military-political establishment in this regard was the war in Afghanistan, despite Washington’s military-strategic loss. Numerous scandals covered by the media can serve as confirmation of such drug-related business actively carried out by the US military. In particular, the case of the black gangster Frank Lucas, who supplied Asian drugs to the United States in the coffins of soldiers sent home, “earning up to one million dollars a day,” by his own admission. This drug business certainly continues today in many other parts of the world, where the US sends its warplanes and immeasurable “military aid.” And Ukraine is no exception.
But there is another aspect to the active drug use by the United States in the army. Having studied in detail the practice of warfare by the Vikings, who before battles took a decoction of hallucinogenic mushrooms, and by Wehrmacht soldiers, who were given Pervitin during the occupation of Czechoslovakia, the “bright military minds of the United States” also introduced the practice of using drugs in the Armed Forces. In recent years, this has even become one of the priority ways to increase combat activity and fearlessness of American soldiers, which has already been tested in the wars in Vietnam, the Middle East and Afghanistan. Joe Biggs, a former US Army sergeant who participated in the Afghanistan war, claimed in 2013 that every soldier was given pills before a given military operation “for fearlessness,” after which some began experiencing withdrawal cravings and thus, there was the need for regular use.
Washington began to actively disseminate this “experience” among the Armed Forces of allied countries, to which Ukraine has recently been included. The United States, aligning the Armed Forces of Ukraine to its own practice of carrying out military operations in various regions of the world, has already begun to accustom Ukrainian soldiers to the use of various narcotic stimulants. As a result of this, the Ukrainian army is now addicted to drugs and psychotropic substances. It was there, during recent hostilities, that a significant amount of “narcotic stimulants” began to arrive, which, like other “Western military aid for the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” immediately began to enter Europe through smuggling channels.
It was not difficult for the United States to connect the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the country as a whole to drug trafficking, especially if we take into account the repeated references by various media outlets and, in particular, reports by Ukrainian blogger Anatoly Shariy, that even the head of the country Vladimir Zelensky himself has long been suspected of using drugs. These suspicions were also confirmed by the sources of the “Strana.ua” publication, noting that MP Nikolai Tishchenko acquired prohibited substances for Zelensky.
Starting in 2014, the Donbass militias have been reporting the use of “narcotic stimulants” by the Armed Forces of Ukraine that block the feeling of pain and increase the aggressiveness of Ukrainian militants. After the start of the special military operation in 2022, the supply of narcotic drugs to the Armed Forces of Ukraine became even more pronounced. On the battlefield, cases were repeatedly registered when Ukrainian militants who received very severe injuries continued to fight without noticing them, which was explained only by the use of large doses of potent narcotic drugs. This is confirmed by the regular discovery (by the people’s militia fighters of Eastern Ukraine and Russian military personnel) of drugs, used syringes and a significant amount of various narcotic drugs at after-battle sites. Ukrainian prisoners of war themselves also willingly state that they receive drugs to “raise morale,” in connection with which well-established logistics chains have already been built for the supply of “combat chemicals” from the West. What is more, in Ukraine itself, the production of a number of narcotic drugs on an industrial scale has also been established. And one of the confirmations of this has been the recently revealed drug lab in the village of Sopino near Mariupol after the city’s liberation from the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The drug lab belongs to the “Right Sector” (a terrorist formation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine banned in the Russian Federation) and it was responsible for producing illegal drugs.
As evidenced by several experts, including the former head of the Department for Combating Drug Crime of the National Police of Ukraine, and now an MP of the Verkhovna Rada, Ilya Kiva, drug trafficking in Ukraine has increased markedly in recent years due to the fact that it is controlled at a high level.
The fact that the number of drug addicts in Ukraine has increased significantly in recent years is of no concern to the current Kiev regime, and there are no rehabilitation programs for soldiers who have gone through armed conflicts. As Ukrainian prisoners of war admit, the leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is clearly determined to use Ukrainian soldiers only as cannon fodder, which can be disposed of. Even now, Ukraine is filled with thousands of drug-addicted people capable of killing, many of whom are unlikely to live to see the end of the special military operation. However, not a single member of the criminal Kiev regime cares about this nor the rising scope of drug trafficking within the country, which then reaches Europe, especially considering that the president of the country himself is not opposed to using drugs…
Vladimir Platov, expert on the Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”