During an interview with NPR aired on Thursday’s broadcast of “Morning Edition,” Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko argued that there should be a special inspector general for Ukraine money like there was for Afghanistan and there are issues around extremely sophisticated weapons sent to the country potentially disappearing.
Sopko said, “We tend to throw a lot of money at a problem. And we ignore the fact that you overwhelm a country. Now, in this case, in…Ukraine, we’re spending a lot of money on weaponry, and this isn’t a bad thing. It needs to be done. But the warning bell is…send too much money too fast and you don’t have enough oversight, you’re going to have wastage and other problems. The other issue is the corruption issue. That was something that was endemic in Afghanistan, and it is endemic in Ukraine. Now, the good news is that the president of…Ukraine and a number of people around him are trying to do something about the corruption. But it is problematic. We need people on the ground. You cannot do oversight remotely. I don’t care what people tell you, you cannot do it. Trust me, I’ve been doing this for almost 50 years. You cannot do oversight remotely.”
He added, “Well, there is going to be wastage. There is going to be pilferage. The question is, how much is too much? And also, one of the problems is the amount of very sophisticated weapons that are going in that could be disappearing. We’re spending $2.5 billion in military assistance per month. That’s seven times what we spent in Afghanistan at the height. So the question is, where are all those weapons going to end up?”
Host Steve Inskeep then asked, “Would you want there to be an inspector general for Ukraine, as there was for Afghanistan?”
Sopko responded, “Well, there are already three IGs there. My experience is, the more the merrier. Why wouldn’t you have some additional support? What a great message that would send to the donor community, to the American contractors, to the international players, to…Ukraine if we created a special IG for Ukraine. We want an efficient way to spend our taxpayer dollars.”
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