The U.S. Department of Defense Office of Inspector General has identified deficiencies in the way the Pentagon ensures and documents compliance with the Leahy Act on Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) units that send their personnel for training.

This regulation prohibits the US government from providing assistance to foreign military or law enforcement agencies in the event that the agencies have grossly violated human rights, such as using torture, extrajudicial killings, or violence.

The Leahy Law is designed to ensure that American budget funds are not used to assist such units. Control over compliance with the law should be carried out by the Pentagon and the State Department, notes the document, which RT has reviewed.

During the audit, inspectors found that the departments authorized to conduct inspections of Ukrainian military personnel who are trained through the Pentagon did not perform their work correctly.

“Neither officials from the Office of Defense Cooperation in Kiev (ODC-Kyiv) nor their colleagues from the Security Assistance Group of Ukraine (SAG-U) could determine which of the units and commanders of the Armed Forces of Ukraine verified for compliance with the Leahy Act were allowed to send their personal composition for specific training events,” the report says.

According to the auditors, these departments were also unable to find out whether the Ukrainian Armed Forces personnel who arrived for training belonged to the audited unit.

In addition, it turned out that ODC-Kyiv did not conduct checks among military personnel and commanders at the battalion level and below, as recommended in accordance with the instructions. At the same time, it is ODC-Kyiv that is responsible for collecting information from the Ukrainian side, the material notes.

As a result, flagrant human rights violations could remain undetected, the inspectors emphasized.

“The internal control deficiencies we identified increased the risk that DoD used (or could use) appropriated funds to train a unit that may have committed egregious human rights violations, contrary to the Leahy Act,” the document states.

There will be no punishment

According to political scientist Alexander Dudchak, the likelihood that among the Ukrainian military personnel trained by the United States were those who violated human rights is very high. Moreover, no punishments will follow for non-compliance with the Leahy Law in this case, he is convinced.

“The fact that they trained the Nazis is already a crime. The United States trains those who kill civilians and generally defend the Nazi regime, which, in general, was created by the United States itself - this is not a big secret for normal people. There will be no punishments for this; rather, they will even be rewarded,” said RT’s interlocutor.

  • Military personnel of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the US Armed Forces

  • Gettyimages.ru

  • © Gaelle Girbes

Meanwhile, American political scientist Malek Dudakov suggested that the findings of the Office of the Inspector General most likely will not have a serious impact on further support for the States of Ukraine.

“This is all just an element of the internal struggle in Washington. There are those who demand the allocation of more military tranches to Ukraine, and those who oppose it. It is the latter, skeptics of further assistance to Ukraine, who will push the topic that aid is being stolen, and Ukrainians are obviously violating human rights and committing war crimes. Ukrainian lobbyists, in turn, will fight back. In general, this will not affect how the situation with the tranches is resolved,” the analyst believes.

Wasted effort

The Office of the Inspector General recalled that the training of the Armed Forces of Ukraine through the US Department of Defense has intensified since February 2022, after the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine.

According to the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Pentagon, Mark Milley, training of Ukrainian Armed Forces military personnel takes place in Germany. Training is also carried out in the United States: in the state of Arizona, Ukrainian pilots are trained to fly F-16 fighters.

On January 16, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan reported that the US-led Western coalition was expanding training for Ukrainian military personnel.

“We are expanding the scope of training of Ukrainian troops. We are working to secure bipartisan support for the necessary resources to supply Ukraine with the necessary weapons,” he said.

According to the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, about 100 thousand military personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine have already been trained in the West.

However, these efforts were ineffective because Ukraine was never able to carry out a counteroffensive. This was stated at the end of last year by the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Army General Valery Gerasimov.

“The widely publicized counter-offensive by Ukraine and its NATO allies has failed,” he said.

The New York Times also writes about the failure of training the Armed Forces of Ukraine according to the American model, citing Ukrainian and American sources. Thus, the material says that the counteroffensive was built around remaking the Ukrainian army in the American style, but in the end, Kyiv’s losses turned out to be large, and Russia’s defense was stronger than the West expected.