Adrian Kellgren’s family-owned gun company in Florida was left holding a $200,000 shipment of semiautomatic rifles after a longtime customer in Ukraine suddenly went silent during Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the country. 

Fearing the worst, Kellgren and his company, KelTec, decided to put those stranded 400 guns to use, sending them to Ukraine’s nascent resistance movement to help civilians fight back against a Russian military that has been repeatedly shelling their apartment buildings, schools, hospitals and hiding places. 

“The American people want to do something,” said Kellgren, a former U.S. Navy pilot. “We enjoy our freedoms; we cherish those things. And when we see a group of people out there getting hammered like this, it’s heartbreaking.” 

Cocoa-based KelTec’s donation is a high-profile example of Americans collecting guns, ammunition, body armor, helmets and other tactical gear in response to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s promise to arm his citizens. But many similar grassroots efforts have been snarled by inexperience with the complex web of regulations governing the international shipment of such equipment. 

Kellgren, who has dealt with such red tape for years, managed to connect through a Ukrainian neighbor with a diplomat in the Ukrainian Embassy who helped him secure a federal arms export license in just four days. That process can often take months. 

Route for weapons

This week, as Congress debated whether to send more advanced weapons and defense systems to Ukraine, workers at KelTec’s warehouse forklifted four plastic-wrapped pallets containing their 9 mm foldable rifles for delivery to an undisclosed NATO-run facility. From there, the shipment’s new recipient, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense, will be responsible for smuggling the weapons into the war zone. 

“That’s when the real derring-do and heroism begins,” Kellgren said. 

From California to New York, elected officials, sheriff’s departments and nonprofits say they have also collected thousands of sets of body armor and millions of rounds of ammunition for Ukraine. 

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis kicked off a campaign last week to ask police and sheriff’s departments to donate surplus ballistic helmets and other equipment. “We know that it can urgently be used to help stop Putin and save Ukraine,” he said. 

But hazards abound: One New York City nonprofit leading an effort to collect tactical gear had 400 bulletproof vests stolen before they could be dispatched. 

Many of the organizers have no clue how to navigate International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR, which sometimes require approvals from the State, Commerce and Defense departments to ship even nonlethal tactical gear. 

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group for firearms manufacturers, distributed step-by-step instructions this week to its more than 8,000 members on how to apply for an expedited export license. They also provided a list of specific sniper rifles, pistols and ammo requested by the Ukraine Embassy in Washington. 

More to send

KelTec hopes to arrange more shipments. Its license allows the export of up to 10,000 weapons and the company has offered the Ukrainians their own production line and weekly shipments. 

Details of KelTec’s efforts surfaced in a Justice Department filing this week by a Maryland-based real estate lawyer, Lukas Jan Kaczmarek, who said that as a volunteer with the Ukrainian-American Bar Association he is helping Ukraine acquire weapons in tandem with Volodymyr Muzylov, the first secretary at the Ukraine Embassy. 

“I expect to work in this capacity for the duration of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and I have not, am not, and shall not receive any monetary compensation for my assistance,” Kaczmarek wrote in his registration as a foreign agent of the Zelenskyy government. 

KelTec isn’t the only arms manufacturer to have answered the call. 

Another Florida company, Adams Arms, posted on its Facebook account a video of what it said is a shipment of carbine rifles destined for Ukraine. The company has also started selling T-shirts emblazoned with the iconic final broadcast of a bombarded Ukrainian Border Guard unit that told a Russian warship to “Go (expletive) Yourself!” Proceeds from shirt sales will go to the Ukrainian National Bank’s war funds. 

While rifles are no match for Putin’s firepower of Sukhoi fighter jets and cluster bombs, they can play an important role if the Russians get bogged down in street-to-street combat, retired U.S. Army Major John Spencer said. 

Small, but easy to use

The semiautomatic rifles KelTec is shipping are perhaps even more valuable than high-tech, anti-aircraft missiles that require extensive training beyond the reach of most civilians, many of whom have never even held a gun before, he said. 

“Every shipment of firearms is critical,” said Spencer, an urban warfare analyst at the Madison Policy Forum, a New York-based think tank. “You’re giving one more fighter, out of tens of thousands, the opportunity to resist with a simple-to-use weapon.” 

Kellgren said he’s been inspired by the resourcefulness and tenacity of Ukrainian citizens and is confident the rifles he’s sending will make a difference. 

“The people of Ukraine have had mostly just civilian firearms and they’re holding off a superpower,” he said. “So the X-factor here not isn’t necessarily what equipment you’re holding. … It comes down to the will to fight.” 
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U.S. President Joe Biden spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday, a day after Biden’s top diplomat acknowledged that Washington believed Beijing is willing to provide military support to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

According to the White House, the call – the first conversation between the two leaders since the invasion – lasted almost two hours.

On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed media reports earlier this week that China may move to help Russia.

“We’re concerned that they are considering directly assisting Russia with military equipment to use in Ukraine,” Blinken said in a briefing. He did not provide evidence of the allegation, which Moscow and Beijing have denied.

Reiterating what other officials have stated, Blinken warned Beijing it would face dire consequences should it support Putin’s war without detailing what those might be.

Beijing said that claims alleging it is supporting Moscow are designed to shift blame.

“Assertions that China knew about, acquiesced to or tacitly supported this war are purely disinformation,” Qin Gang, Chinese ambassador in the U.S., stated in an opinion piece published in The Washington Post earlier this week.

China’s official position on Moscow’s invasion has been to straddle both sides, neither fully supportive nor directly opposed. Beijing says it recognizes Ukraine’s sovereignty, while acknowledging that NATO’s expansion has raised “legitimate” security concerns for Russia.

The White House would not confirm whether the U.S. is prepared to offer anything to entice Beijing to not assist Russia, including reduction of tariffs against Chinese goods that were placed by the Trump administration.

“This is a conversation about where President Xi stands. It’s up to the Chinese to decide where they want to stand, where they want to be as the history books are written,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told VOA Thursday.

What can China do?

Aside from providing military or economic support for Russia’s invasion, observers say China may become a backdoor for sanctions against Moscow or become a channel to smuggle goods to get around any Western export restrictions.

“China is a big question mark here,” adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Heidi Crebo-Rediker told VOA.

If that’s the case, Washington will likely move to punish Beijing. Officials have previously hinted that Beijing can be exposed to secondary sanctions. For example, the U.S. can prevent a Chinese semiconductor company from accessing American equipment and software if Washington discovered the company is violating U.S. export controls by selling chips to Russia.

However, any meaningful sanctions on China would also harm Western economic interests already under pressure from the current global supply chain crisis.

The administration would rather not have to take that step, said Stacie Goddard, Mildred Lane Kemper professor of Political Science at Wellesley College. “They would rather convince China, if not to back off completely but at least to not aid Russia in any sort of significant way that allows Putin to escape the punch of the sanctions,” Goddard told VOA.

China has criticized Western sanctions put in place by the U.S., the European Union, and other allies, saying it creates new problems and interferes with the political settlement of conflicts.  

Eye on Taiwan

In a show of force, hours before the Biden and Xi call, the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong sailed through the Taiwan Strait, close to the Taiwan-controlled island of Kinmen, according to Taiwan’s Defense Ministry as reported by Reuters.

The USS Ralph Johnson, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, shadowed the carrier partly on its route, said Reuters’ source.

Last month, days after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the USS Ralph Johnson briefly crossed the strait’s median line. Beijing was irked by the move, which the U.S. 7th Fleet called a “routine Taiwan Strait transit.”

Chinese government media alleged that the U.S. move was designed to reassure Taiwanese “separatists” that Washington is committed to the island’s security. Beijing considers the democratically governed island of Taiwan as a breakaway province.

Power moves aside, observers say Beijing has been surprised at the speed with which not only European allies, but also U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific including Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Japan, Australia and even Singapore have imposed sanctions on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.

These countries in the region in many ways balance their interests between Washington and Beijing. Observers say that by sanctioning Moscow so quickly, these U.S. allies are sending a clear signal to Beijing that it should expect  a unified and swift response to any Chinese incursion toward Taiwan or the South China Sea.

“It might be one thing for China to expand its interest, but if it begins to show signs that it’s not going to actually respect sovereign territoriality in the region, these states are going to very quickly act to band together to push back against China,” Goddard said.

Global rivalry

Observers say that both the U.S. and China to varying degrees are looking at the Ukraine crisis in the framework of global rivalry between two superpowers in the long term.

“China has viewed this entirely from the point of view of Cold War-style U.S.-China competition,” said Robert Daly, director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson Center. “The United States is mostly concerned about Russia and Ukraine itself, but it has clearly been taking great pains to make sure that China is associated with Russia and tarred with the same brush,” he told VOA.

Noting the current tensions between Washington and Beijing, observers are pessimistic the two powers can achieve an agreement on Ukraine. The two largest economies have failed to work together on global issues including combating COVID and climate change and alleviating the global supply chain crisis.

“They are failing again and again and again,” Daly said, underscoring that constant communication must be maintained for the two to understand where they can and cannot cooperate.

“We are not going to be able to work out a manageable U.S.-China relationship if we only speak to each other when there are crises,” he said.
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As the nation’s historically Black colleges remain on edge after receiving dozens of bomb threats in recent weeks, federal law enforcement officials said they have identified six suspects who they believe are responsible for most of the racially motivated crimes.

More than a third of America’s 101 historically Black colleges and universities have been targeted by calls or emails threatening to set off bombs on their campuses since early January, with the vast majority arriving during the celebration of Black History Month in February. The threats are being investigated as hate crimes.

At a congressional hearing Thursday, federal law enforcement agencies said they are working aggressively to make arrests in the 59 cases, calling the case their “highest priority.” All six suspects are juveniles, according to the FBI.

Ryan Young, executive assistant director of the FBI intelligence branch, said investigators have identified “one person and a small group,” although some of the threats may have been copycat crimes.

“Our intention is to bring these individuals to justice,” Young told the House Oversight Committee.

The Biden administration this week announced a series of actions in response to the threats. The Education Department on Wednesday issued guidance to help colleges navigate threats and get help from federal agencies. Vice President Kamala Harris, the nation’s first Black vice president and an alumna of Howard University, a historically Black institution in Washington, also notified colleges they are eligible for grants meant to help schools recover from violence.

No explosives have been found in connection with the threats, but students say the prospect of violence has loomed over their lives. The threats have prompted lockdowns and evacuations, sometimes late at night, leaving students anxious and uneasy.

Emmanuel Ukot, president of the student government at Xavier University of Louisiana, said tensions have been high in the wake of two threats at the school of more than 3,000 students. Some students have been afraid to return to classes, he said, and some have sought mental health services.

“The triple impact of COVID-19, the ongoing racial reckoning in the country and the bomb threats on HBCU campuses is having a real and lasting impact on our students,” he told lawmakers.

Howard University has received at least four threats since Jan. 4. After the second one, officials gave students a day off for their mental health.

“The added stress and in some cases paranoia that students, faculty and staff have subsequently experienced cannot be overstated,” said Kylie Burke, president of Howard’s student government.

The threats began in early January but picked up on Feb. 1, the first day of Black History Month, when 18 colleges were threatened on the same day. Some have come as recently as Monday, when Morehouse College in Atlanta locked down its campus in response to a bomb threat.

The vast majority of the threats have been made by phone, with a small number coming in emails or other online messages, said Young, of the FBI. Investigators have had trouble tracing some threats that were made using encryption technology, he added.

Young declined to provide further details on the six juveniles, but he said they “know they are under the scope of an investigation.”

The investigation is spread across 31 FBI field offices along with other units including its cyber crimes division.

The threats evoke a history of bombings and other acts of violence against Black Americans.

Lawmakers on the Oversight Committee recalled the 1963 bombing of an Alabama church that killed four young Black girls. Others noted a 1999 bombing at Florida A&M University, a historically Black school. Two pipe bombs exploded in that case, although no one was injured.

“These reprehensible threats against Black institutions echo the tactics employed by the Ku Klux Klan and others decades ago as they tried to instill terror in the Black community,” said Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney, chair of the committee.

Lawmakers from both parties urged authorities to hasten the investigation and expressed frustration that no arrests have been made, prolonging the turmoil for students and faculty.

“This committee is looking for guarantees from the FBI that there’s going to be arrests made,” Republican Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana said. “There should be no systemic fear at our colleges and universities in America.”

FBI and Homeland Security officials said they are continuing to investigate, and they have been providing training to help HBCUs respond to threats.

Michelle Asha Cooper, an acting assistant education secretary, told lawmakers that HBCUs will need help recovering from the threats, which have diverted emergency resources and placed an increased burden on campus mental health systems.

“Campus leaders do not have all the resources at their disposal to respond appropriately to the ongoing threats, and are not fully aware of the resources available from the federal government,” she said.

The House last week passed a resolution condemning the threats and affirming support for the schools. But Democrats said Congress must do more, with some calling for legislation that would increase HBCU funding for security, infrastructure and other costs.

Students testifying at the hearing echoed the call for further support. Burke said that while Howard benefits from being located in the nation’s capital, with access to its security resources, many HBCUs don’t have that kind of privilege.

“When you support historically Black colleges and universities, what you’re really supporting is the next generation of Black lawyers, filmmakers, engineers, artists, doctors and even politicians,” she said.
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According to U.S. and Ukrainian officials, Moscow’s efforts to win over the world with its accounts of events in Ukraine are doing no better than Russia’s military forces inside Ukraine.

More often than not, they are meeting with stiff resistance.

“Outside of Russia, we have not seen their information operations really find purchase,” a senior U.S. defense official told reporters Thursday in response to a question from VOA.

“We have seen a continuation of Russian attempts to blame stuff they’re doing on the Ukrainians, to accuse Ukrainians of doing stuff that they (the Russians) haven’t done yet,” the official said, on condition of anonymity in order to discuss intelligence. “But outside of Russia, there’s little to no evidence that their information ops are working. In fact, we’ve seen quite the opposite.”

Despite such assessments, Russian officials and Russian-affiliated media continued to try to seed social media and the airwaves in places their broadcasts have not been blocked, with allegations of wrongdoing by Ukraine and its backers.

One of Russia’s perhaps most successful recent tropes has been its allegation that the United States has been funding bioweapon research in Ukraine.

A survey by the Washington-based Alliance for Securing Democracy, a national security advocacy group that tracks disinformation efforts online, found that Russian officials and Russian state-backed media tweeted the word “biological” almost 600 times in the past week.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense sought to push those claims further Thursday, publishing new allegations on its English-language Telegram feed.

“Russian specialists of nuclear, biological and chemical protection troops have studied original documents revealing details of the implementation of a secret project by the United States in Ukraine to study ways of transmitting diseases to humans through bats at a laboratory in Kharkov,” one post said.

The Russian Telegram feed also began pushing claims that a theater in Mariupol where civilians had been sheltering was not hit by a Russian airstrike as claimed by the Mariupol city council, but blown up by the Azov Battalion, a pro-Ukrainian force that analysts say has embraced neo-Nazi views.

“A refugee from Mariupol said that militants from the Azov nationalist battalion, while retreating, blew up the city drama theater where there were civilians, whom they used as a ‘human shield,’” the Ministry of Defense said on Telegram.

Within hours, the allegations about the bioweapons and the theater were being echoed on official Russian government and media Twitter accounts and websites, in multiple languages.

The senior U.S. defense official declined Thursday to elaborate on the Russian accounts of how the theater in Mariupol was destroyed, saying only that none of the accounts could be confirmed at this time.

But U.S. officials have repeatedly denied Russia’s ongoing accusations about developing bioweapons in Ukraine.

“It’s a bunch of malarkey,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters last week. “We are not, not developing biological or chemical weapons inside Ukraine.”

U.S. intelligence officials also denied the charges, instead saying Moscow’s insistence on repeating the allegations might indicate it is planning a chemical or biological attack.

“This is something … that’s very much a part of Russia’s playbook,” CIA Director William Burns told a Senate panel last week. “They’ve used those weapons against their own citizens. They’ve at least encouraged the use in Syria and elsewhere, so it’s something that we take very seriously.”

Still, there are some concerns that even if Russia is failing to sway most people in the West, a small minority are repeating the Kremlin’s talking points on podcasts and even on some U.S. cable news networks.

U.S. Republican Senator Marco Rubio last week noted that the bioweapons allegations in particular have “got some people fired up.”

Others are more optimistic.

“The sharing of intelligence to shine a light on disinformation … I’ve never seen it better in the 35 years I’ve spent in uniform,” the head of the U.S. National Security Agency, General Paul Nakasone, told lawmakers late Thursday.

Ukrainian officials have likewise said their efforts are paying off.

“Ukraine is winning this information war and winning it massively” Heorhii Tykhy, an adviser to the spokesperson for Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said during a virtual forum last week.

“Defensive strategies are not enough. … What really helps fight the disinformation is proactive strategies,” he added.

The senior U.S. defense official on Thursday was complimentary of Kyiv’s efforts, saying the impact is being felt far beyond Ukraine.

“Ukrainians are doing a good job staying ahead of the information ops,” the official said. “They’re doing a good job communicating … using social media to great effect.”

“So, we just haven’t seen the Russians have much success.”
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Ukrainian and Russian officials say they have made progress in negotiations toward a cease-fire in the 3-week war. Experts detect a shift in Russia’s demands as the war has gone on much longer than it planned. But U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says he sees no evidence Russia is serious about diplomacy. VOA’s senior diplomatic correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
Camera: Yan Boechat 
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