FSB Fighting Losing Battle against Illegal Armorers who Convert Weapons flowing into Russia from Putin’s War in Ukraine

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 14 – Since Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine in 2022, guns from that conflict have been flooding into the Russian Federation where they are adapted by underground armorers for use by private individuals, criminal organizations and at least potentially anti-Moscow underground organizations.

            Over the last four years, the FSB has repeatedly reported that it has identified and closed down the armorers involved in this process and closed them down. For those claims and their frequent repetition, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2026/05/guns-flooding-into-north-caucasus-from.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/08/fsb-raids-underground-armament-firms-in.html and the sources cited therein.

            This week, the FSB made a similar announcement, declaring that it, together with the interior ministry and the Russian Guard, had arrested more than a hundred people involved in this illegal arms trade in 43 regions of Russia, among which the North Caucasus was singled out as a major focus (vfokuse.mail.ru/articles/69641897-fsb-soobshila-o-raskrytii-chernyh-oruzhejnikov-bolee-chem-v-40-regionah/ and kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/426613).

            The fact that this announcement is so similar to earlier announcements by the FSB shows that the Russian siloviki are currently fighting a losing battle on this front and that both more guns are flowing from the front into Russia and that more people are now involved in this illicit process than earlier, yet another way Putin’s war in Ukraine is coming home to Russians.

              Russian experts say there may now be more than 30 million guns in private hands, many of them illegal, and that even in Moscow there may be as many as 250,000 residents who have almost 700,000 guns in their possession (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2026/02/more-than-quarter-million-muscovites.html).

              Most of these figures involve guns that are registered, but not all – and the means there is almost certainly going to be an upsurge in violent crime and even violent underground political activity, something that means siloviki who go after such people may discover that they face newly armed opponents.