The US has transferred more than 5,000 AK-47s, rocket launchers and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition seized from Iran to Ukraine as it tries to defend against Russia, the US Central Command has announced. Ukraine has been facing severe shortages of weapons and munitions on the battlefield in its raging war against Russia, with the US unable to send more equipment from its stockpiles until more funding is approved by the much-divided Congress.

On April 4, 2024, the US government transferred over 5,000 AK-47s, machine guns, sniper rifles, RPG-7s and over 500,000 rounds of 7.62mm ammunition to the Ukrainian armed forces, CENTCOM said.

It said the material transferred to Ukraine is enough to equip one Ukrainian brigade – around 4,000 personnel – with small-arms rifles.

“These weapons will help Ukraine defend against Russia’s invasion,” CENTCOM said in a statement on Tuesday.

The US government obtained ownership of these munitions on December 1, 2023, through the Department of Justice’s civil forfeiture claims against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The munitions were originally seized by the US military and its partners “from four separate transiting stateless vessels between 22 May 2021 to 15 Feb 2023,” the statement said. The US transferred over one million rounds of seized Iranian ammunition to the Ukrainian armed forces in October, CNN reported. Over the past year, the US Navy has seized thousands of Iranian assault rifles and more than one million rounds of ammunition from vessels used by Iran to ship weapons to the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The seizures, frequently carried out with regional partner forces, target small stateless vessels on routes historically used to smuggle weapons to the Houthis.

For the last year, the Biden administration has been working to legally send the seized weapons, which are stored in CENTCOM facilities across the Middle East, to the Ukrainian military.

The munitions were being transferred from the IRGC to the Houthis in Yemen in violation of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2216.

“U.S. CENTCOM is committed to working with our allies and partners to counter the flow of Iranian lethal aid in the region by all lawful means including U.S. and U.N. sanctions and through interdictions.

“Iran’s support for armed groups threatens international and regional security, our forces, diplomatic personnel, and citizens in the region, as well as those of our partners. We will continue to do whatever we can to shed light on and stop Iran’s destabilising activities,” the CENTCOM statement said.