By Sara Sirota The Intercept
Top foreign policymaker Sen. Bob Menendez couldn’t say whether his bill would monitor where U.S.-funded arms end up.
While Senate Democrats consider a way forward to send Ukraine hundreds of millions of dollars so it can buy new weapons, some of the most influential advocates are neglecting measures to make sure they don’t wind up with the country’s notorious neo-Nazis.
Last month, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., introduced legislation to give Ukraine $500 million for arms purchases and impose what he’s called the “mother of all sanctions” on Russia if it invades. The bill mandates a number of reports on U.S. defense equipment transfers and Russian intelligence threats as well as the expansion of American news propaganda. But it makes no mention of reports to oversee whether U.S weapons go to white supremacists like the Azov Battalion, a unit in the Ukrainian National Guard with ties to the country’s far-right, ultranationalist National Corps party and Azov movement. Last year, Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., called on Secretary of State Antony Blinken to label the Azov Battalion a foreign terrorist organization, saying it “uses the internet to recruit new members and then radicalizes them to use violence to pursue its white identity political agenda.”

















