Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:00that arms a ship to the middle east from a country whose top officials
00:00:03constantly complain about shortages of ammunition and
00:00:06military equipment, weapons for Ukraine, ammunition
00:00:10for Ukraine, new defense systems for
00:00:14and from Turkey they enter Ukraine.
00:00:18of billions of dollars. We'll continue to show the power of partnership, we'll continue to
00:00:22bolster Ukraine's armed forces by rushing them the capabilities that
00:00:25they need to defend their country. But where
00:00:28does this aid really go?
00:00:30and who decided to arm a country that has been one of the biggest supermarkets of
00:00:34smuggled weapons for almost 30 years.
00:00:39weapon that is coming to
00:00:50you can tell me about them,
00:01:09My name is Radwan Mortada. I am a journalist specializing
00:01:12in security and judicial files
00:01:16and terrorist groups. Since then until now,
00:01:19I have specialized specifically in security files and I was following
00:01:23the files of jihadists in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq
00:01:27and the Middle East.
00:01:30is an independent Lebanese journalist and during his career he's
00:01:33produced hundreds of reports on wars in the Middle
00:01:36East. He's met with Islamic jihadist leaders many
00:01:40times and knows exactly how weapons get into their
00:01:43hands.
00:01:47This is the map,
00:01:49the main thing I'm showing you is the map. That means
00:01:53here, for example, all the Lebanese-Syrian
00:01:57ammunition, a portion of borders have
00:02:00through them, who are professional smugglers, who are residents
00:02:04of those areas, Lebanese and Syrian
00:02:07Radwan was shocked to learn that arms had traffic to the
00:02:10middle east mainly from
00:02:12Ukraine.
00:02:18Now, what we're going to do is call one of the arms dealers
00:02:22in the Bekaa region so that he can come and talk to us, and we'll film
00:02:26an interview with him so he can tell us exactly
00:02:29what the situation is. Is there Ukrainian weapons with us or not, and where are
00:02:32they coming from?
00:02:35Hello, hello?
00:02:37Hello. Oh, hello, how
00:02:40are you? I'm good, how are you?
00:02:44I'm good, my dear. We were talking about filming,
00:02:48we want to film with
00:02:51him and so on. When can we? When do
00:02:54you want? We can today, we can tomorrow, and he walks in front of me
00:02:57I get there and find someone waiting for me and you walk in the valley.
00:03:30Is there a demand for weapons now or not, and what is the link between the war
00:03:33in Ukraine and arms smuggling
00:03:36to the region? town of Zakle a
00:03:3930-m drive from the Syrian border, a meeting is
00:03:42arranged here with a guide who will take the journalist to major arms dealer.
00:04:02an unremarkable gray house on the outskirts, but this
00:04:06modest exterior hides what resembles an arms
00:04:09warehouse.
00:04:12arms smuggling is big business for the locals and
00:04:15sometimes.
00:04:19Why did you choose this way of life? Our parents
00:04:22and grandparents used to work with weapons. Because
00:04:25the area we live in, the state offers nothing.
00:04:29There's nothing. We don't have a state. We don't have hospitals, we don't have
00:04:32job opportunities, we have nothing. And all our lives, my parents, grandparents,
00:04:36aircraft and helicopters, in and great-grandparents are the ones who work in this field.
00:04:49The question is, where do these weapons come from? Today,
00:04:52the weapons you see here in front of you, we have two sources
00:04:55for them. Many people, because of the economic crisis, have started
00:04:59selling weapons. I mean, the poor class and the destitute class today
00:05:03are selling individual weapons, not heavy or
00:05:06medium weapons. They have individual weapons that they are forced to sell in order
00:05:09to live, and this is because of the economic crisis. And also,
00:05:13today we are receiving Ukrainian
00:05:16weapons. You know that at the beginning of the crisis in Ukraine
00:05:19and the war, NATO gave the Ukrainians weapons. These weapons were then
00:05:23taken by traders to Turkey,
00:05:26Iraq, and from Iraq they also come to Syria and Lebanon. We now find
00:05:30in the market today that we as traders are being offered weapons,
00:05:33medium and light weapons. They tell us that these
00:05:37are Ukrainian NATO weapons and so on. You feel that the piece is still new,
00:05:40a clean piece and a weapon. It's good, but its price is higher than
00:05:44the price of Lebanese weapons and the weapons available
00:05:47in the market, but the weapon is very, very, very good. The Ukrainian
00:05:52the market.
00:05:59What kind of weapons are coming the most? For example, if
00:06:02the weapons coming from Ukraine through Syria
00:06:05by land are Kalashnikovs, PKCs, and
00:06:09small rifles, all still
00:06:12in their original packaging, never used.
00:06:16Never.
00:06:20People love it. I mean, we have young people who like to buy
00:06:24such things. I mean, you tell him this piece came from Ukraine, still in its box, or
00:06:28still well-preserved, as they say, they love it. So everything coming in
00:06:32is medium-sized, I mean, PKC weapons and smaller, PKC,
00:06:35Kalashnikov, and a large number
00:06:38of rifles are coming in. I mean,
00:06:41small rifles, and there were also sniper
00:06:44rifles. No, as for sniper
00:06:47rifles, sniper rifles came in, but most of them are still being
00:06:51sold in Syria. A few pieces came into Lebanon. Today,
00:06:54sniper rifles are in demand in Syria because there is war there, and in Lebanon
00:06:58we don't use sniper rifles much. People
00:07:01today prefer the machine gun and handgun coming from
00:07:04Ukraine, and yes, weapons from Ukraine spreading all
00:07:08over the world who turned this country into major arms hub?
00:07:42News: The USSR is no more. The republics of the former
00:07:46power, with the exception of Georgia and the Baltic states, there are 11 of them,
00:07:49have established the Commonwealth of Independent States. Its supreme bodies
00:07:53are the Council of Heads of State and the Council of Heads of Government. Borders will be
00:07:57open. Control over nuclear weapons is unified.
00:08:01The structure and high command of the armed forces remain in their previous
00:08:04form until December 30, until the next meeting of leaders in
00:08:08Minsk.
00:09:12Czechoslovakia and Hungary will return to their homeland in six
00:09:16tank divisions. In addition, by decision of the USSR government, all equipment
00:09:20and weapons from Hungary and Poland were withdrawn
00:09:23here. This was a mass of weapons, a golden
00:09:27barrel.
00:09:35Ukraine now independent came into possession of, according to the
00:09:39most conservative estimates, 900 tanks.
00:09:421100 armored vehicles, 1800 artillery
00:09:46systems, 400
00:09:49addition to tens of millions of small arms and billions of rounds
00:09:53of ammunition. London's international institute for strategic
00:09:57studies said Ukraine's military property was worth around $90
00:10:00billion
00:10:01dollars.
00:10:07Tanks, a gas turbine tank can go 15-20
00:10:11km, which...
00:10:25Within a month of the USSR's collapse, the new
00:10:29Ukrainian state launched a global sell-off of Soviet
00:10:33weapons. The first contracts were signed
00:10:36shortly after, and in
00:10:381991,
00:10:40series of civil wars broke out in Yugoslavia.
00:11:05I saw the breakup of Yugoslavia, I participated
00:11:08in
00:11:09the war,
00:11:15I acquired certain military knowledge
00:11:19during my military service and a security course
00:11:22in the Pančevo garrison, Military Post
00:11:252875, under General Mladen
00:11:28Bratić.
00:11:36In the early 1990s.
00:11:49They would arrive in vehicles, armored
00:11:53personnel carriers to Umpropora, of that time, so international
00:11:56organizations, but people arrived, weapons mainly
00:12:00arrived as part
00:12:03of flights on planes that were
00:12:07at Izetbegović's disposal, it was mostly an Antonov 2
00:12:10and it was operated by Ukrainian pilots,
00:12:13Ukrainian armament and military equipment, because the connections with
00:12:17uh through certain Ukrainian generals reached
00:12:20the top of the then Ukrainian authorities, up to
00:12:24President Leonid Kuchma, who reached various people in
00:12:28the Ministry
00:12:28of Defense.
00:12:34That would then open up a much bigger question of responsibility
00:12:38of the political and state leadership for financing terrorism, for war
00:12:41crimes in Vozuća, especially in Central Bosnia,
00:12:45that is, against Croats, in Vozuća, against Serbs and so on. The company Astra
00:12:48also came with S300, a missile system
00:12:52that was a wonder at the time, which was just then. So,
00:12:55practically, few countries had it,
00:12:59imagine that Ukraine sent one of the two it had at that
00:13:03time to Croatia.
00:13:25I am not a warmonger, I a peacemaker, eating the dogs, eating the
00:13:28cats,
00:13:31hogy there you go, all squeaky
00:13:33clean,
00:13:41the US mid-term elections have come and gone, in the wake of the cycle the
00:13:45GoP finds itself mauled and left for roadkill, it is
00:13:49already being held as an historic election, however is
00:13:53it a change election, is yet to be
00:13:55determined,
00:13:58what if everything you think you know is only part of the
00:14:02story. bold economic moves, high stakes battles on
00:14:05the world stage, war and peace, the
00:14:09very future of America. the headlines are loud, the
00:14:13debates are fierce. now it's time for a closer look.
00:14:16know the policy, understand the impact. america first,
00:14:20the
00:14:20Scottty.
00:14:34Heavy weapons were delivered to Bosnia by sea from Odessa,
00:14:38the cargo went through the Croatian ports of Rieha and
00:14:41split, small arms and ammunition were often delivered by
00:14:45aircraft piloted by
00:14:47Ukrainiansvo
00:14:49During the war in 91-95, there was officially
00:14:53an arms import embargo
00:14:55on the territory of the SFRY, an embargo that the United
00:14:59Nations adopted. However,
00:15:01in practice, that embargo was not, was not respected.
00:15:05I found out immediately when they were shot down, when that
00:15:08Ukrainian Antonov was shot down, it was
00:15:12at Plitvice Lakes. It
00:15:16looks like a jungle where it crashed, that Antonov
00:15:19plane. And it is a transport plane, that's from the Soviet Union
00:15:23already, right? Uh. Its task was to transport
00:15:27weapons and ammunition for the Fifth
00:15:30Muslim Corps from Croatia, either from Pleso Airport in Zagreb, or from Krk, there was
00:15:34an airport on the island of Krk. an airport on the island of Krk.
00:15:37Leonid Minin, an entrepreneur close to Ukraine's
00:15:41top leadership, was one of those who oversaw armed
00:15:44shipments. This rare footage shows me in watching a
00:15:48small arms demonstration with colleagues.
00:15:51We'd never have learned of the existence of this major trafficker of
00:15:55death,
00:15:57he had, he was the owner of a
00:16:01hotel in Cinisello Balsamo.
00:16:05And so. This
00:16:07hotel had the presidential suite on the top floor, that is,
00:16:11a presidential suite, not a four-star hotel, but it had its
00:16:14little room. So he picked up
00:16:17prostitutes that he took to his room in his
00:16:21suite. So one of
00:16:23these was not paid, she went to the
00:16:27police and told them, dear, go there and
00:16:31you will find this Minin with other
00:16:34prostitutes.
00:16:37in police in his room they found piles of cocaine,
00:16:40$150,000 in cash, diamonds and documents in
00:16:44he was arrested and these huge two
00:16:48suitcases were found with him, which contained all his documentation. He trusted no one, he carried
00:16:51that with him.
00:16:55Here's one of the documents from that briefcase, an arms order
00:16:58signed by the Code divoir's minister of defense. Five million rounds of
00:17:02ammunition, 10,00 grenades, thousands of automatic
00:17:05rifles and grenade launchers. This documentation
00:17:08was exactly the key to Liberian
00:17:12exports, the key to
00:17:14exports to the Democratic Republic of Congo, to
00:17:18Burkina Faso, to Eritrea and Ethiopia.
00:18:07timber enterprise officially at conducted logging
00:18:11operations in Liberia, but in fact as confirmed by a
00:18:15UN special commission, it supplied arms to president Charles
00:18:18Taylor, a ruthless dictator guilty of genocide
00:18:22against his country's citizens. I then went to Monrovia in Liberia,
00:18:26I went to visit the factory to try to find other
00:18:29documentation there, but at the same time it supplied
00:18:33arms to the RUF rebels
00:18:36through the mediation of the president of
00:18:39Liberia,
00:18:40Taylor,
00:18:44this is not a military
00:18:47cool, this is pure civilian of
00:18:50rising,
00:18:55using dummy companies, minion acquired weapons through the Uker
00:18:59Spetz export corporation, a government entity, which in the
00:19:02early 2000s was the main supplier of weapons to African
00:19:06dictators.
00:20:07of weapons, Ukrainian war barons, chartered aircraft, which were registered
00:20:11in offshore zones.
00:20:14Most armed shipments were carried a BAC-11, owned by
00:20:18an Israeli businessman of Ukrainian origin, Leonid
00:20:21Minin.
00:20:25Registered in the Cayen, it was operated by Limad, a firm registered in
00:20:29Monaco. These are photos of one of the airlines
00:20:32that arrived in Liberia, circumventing the UN Arms
00:20:36embargo. stagged full of weapons boxes,
00:20:39the plane was owned by Leonard Minnin. The
00:20:43first delivery arranged by Minnin in March
00:20:451999, was a cargo of 68 tons
00:20:49of...
00:20:58RPGs sevens and related
00:21:01ordinance, asterla 3 and
00:21:04met systems and 80 related missiles, the
00:21:07arms were bought from the ukrainian arms marketing
00:21:11company, yucer pets export, minions and his
00:21:14business partners names and their involvement in UK
00:21:17exports arms deliveries during
00:21:20investigations into arms dealing in the middle east payments of the
00:21:24shipment show the global nature of the arms deal
00:21:27arranged by men, italian prosecution
00:21:31authorities were directed reportedly by men
00:21:34himself to a Hungarian bank account owned by
00:21:38a company alligidly related to Menin. further payments
00:21:42from the same amount were made to various companies
00:21:45including yoker spet
00:21:48export and
00:22:03The scale of the trade is astonishing, hundreds of thousands of tons of contraband were plied between the
00:22:06continents, for some odd reason it went
00:22:10unnoticed for many years. The
00:22:13second arms delivery arranged by minn was rooted
00:22:16via Codevoir rather than Burkina.
00:22:20so the arms deal consisted of 130
00:22:2413 tons of arms brokered through
00:22:27the Ukrainian state owned company
00:22:31and included 10,500
00:22:34ak 47 asalt rifel,
00:22:38120 sniper guns, 100
00:22:41grenade launcher, night vision equipment and 8
00:22:45million rounds of
00:22:47these arms was delived in July
00:22:502000, apparently destened for Code
00:22:53divoir using an end user certificate
00:22:57signed on May 26th, 2000s by a senior
00:23:01official of the Ministry of Defense. The officials mentioned in the documents,
00:23:05their patrons in Keve and Minon and his friends didn't seem to be on intelligence
00:23:09agency radars. Min had easily obtained numerous
00:23:12international passports found during the raid on his hotel room in
00:23:16Italy.
00:23:20we were saying that, a Ukrainian passport, an Israeli service passport,
00:23:23eh, so he also had that, which allowed him to
00:23:27travel very easily, but it indicates that he had good
00:23:31connections, so there too
00:23:34one should ask why he had all these passports
00:23:38that they then denied, because "oh, but we Germans never
00:23:42gave him a passport," he had it. during his
00:23:44investigation the journalist concluded that without the support of
00:23:48us top brass... "It would have been impossible implement such a
00:23:52colossal trade of Ukrainian arms. Through the black
00:23:55market, they managed to solve some sensitive
00:23:58issues. We got our hands on this
00:24:02immense quantity of documents that allowed us to understand, the
00:24:06proofs are in the waybills, the proofs are in the payments, the proofs are
00:24:10in the bank files,
00:24:13but there are also all the reports that these people maintained
00:24:17among themselves in
00:24:21doing their business,
00:24:23business of various kinds, here the illegal
00:24:26arms market is
00:24:29hidden, secret precisely because it is illegal, and he
00:24:33we found in this documentation that he
00:24:36was indeed the author of these
00:24:39arms sales, but he was not
00:24:43he was also the one who maintained relationships with a series of
00:24:46arms traffickers, for example with Marc Rich,
00:24:50the famous arms trafficker pardoned by Clinton
00:24:53in the last days of his presidency.
00:24:56Minnen's Billionaire Live Style, dalliances with African terrorists and
00:25:00connections with politicians and government officials all around the world, even
00:25:04inspired Hollywood. The film's story is quite accurate,
00:25:08but unlike Nicholas Cage's character, cops didn't go after
00:25:11Minnin. Despite overwhelming evidence, an
00:25:15Italian court only charged him with possession of drugs and
00:25:18diamonds. in Italy, justice is rather
00:25:22slow. There are poor people who wait years to get
00:25:26justice. Mr. Minin manages to get an appeal, then
00:25:29the Supreme Court
00:25:33where he is acquitted in less than
00:25:37a year, this is disturbing. I must
00:25:40say that we are trying to understand what happened to him, it is not well known
00:25:44what happened
00:25:45to him.
00:25:50only Minnin was a link in a chain of interested and very
00:25:54powerful parties, so powerful that just for them, the
00:25:57Ukrainian parliament adopted special laws, for instance,
00:26:01law number 19.
00:27:02on the horizon a boat,
00:27:06on the boat people
00:27:08waved their hands, approaching, approaching,
00:27:12then
00:27:14the shooting began, it turned out that their technique of
00:27:17capture was well-rehearsed, one group climbed onto
00:27:21the ship's board, the second covered them with fire, everything that
00:27:25could be was shot through, and additionally there were two shots from an RPG,
00:27:28one fell into the sea, splashed, not reaching
00:27:32the board, the second hit the board, but did not
00:27:35explode, from this I have long
00:27:39concluded: the pirates could not have known the nature of
00:27:42the cargo, the pirates themselves, because if
00:27:46they had known that there
00:27:50was a huge amount of explosives being transported, they would never have
00:27:53shot, because 10,000
00:27:56tons, if they exploded, they would have made
00:27:59a large crater in the sea along with these pirates,
00:28:03when they saw,
00:28:07went down into the hold, looked,
00:28:09of course, the pirates' eyes gleamed with joy, because
00:28:13there had never been such a haul.
00:29:05ban territories, let's go,
00:29:09crimeia here in Iran, we've traveled
00:29:12to Lugansk, and it's happening right here in China,
00:29:16it's actually quite a beautiful day here,
00:29:20ignored stories, I'm
00:29:22listening, thank you so much, thank you so much, so great to
00:29:26see you, really, God bless you, forbidden
00:29:29questions, I'm asking them, what's a free country? Are you
00:29:32worried, are you scared? we Rusky, are you a dictator? Are
00:29:36you thinking about creating something? Not planning to run for
00:29:39president. We will show you what they
00:29:50United States. I did not know that. That's the
00:29:53Sanchez effect. Tens of millions are now watching, and
00:29:57we're just getting
00:29:58started.
00:30:28France is on high alert as hundreds of thousands take
00:30:32to streets in a fresh wave of protest against President Emmanuel
00:30:35Macron's government.
00:30:38Let us see Olashki as a spark in a
00:30:42world of darkness
00:30:44capable of illuminating the bass into
00:30:47humanity. First Lady Milania Trump praises the
00:30:51cooperation shown by Moscow and Kiev during humanitarian
00:30:54operation she brokered for the embattle city of Baloshi.
00:30:58Russia's envoy will pass a letter from