Footage from a news broadcast is being circulated online, allegedly saying that anti-tank weapons supplied by the United States to Ukraine are now in the possession of a Mexican drug cartel. We checked if this is true.
The fact that American grenade launchers intended for the Armed Forces of Ukraine ended up in the hands of drug mafia in Mexico, reported June 1, Zvezda TV channel. Row Media, for example "Arguments and facts", wrote that the criminals "outbought the weapons that the Kiev regime offered them," or even So: “The Ukrainian Armed Forces sold Swedish grenade launchers to the Mexican drug cartel.” Some publications are accompanied personnel from a TV news broadcast in Spanish or screenshot, which allegedly shows a drug cartel militant with a machine gun and a grenade launcher. Some sources claimthat this is a Swedish M136 grenade launcher, others writethat this is an American Javelin ATGM. The story became popular on Telegram, in particular with thematic posts of channels Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia And "Stars» shared by TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov (242,000 and 219,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), and fast received 843,000 views on the Readovka channel. Various variations this plot, according to the TGStat service, received over 4 million views in June. The plot also became widespread on English language.
Four-second video clip, which became the basis for publications, went viral at the end of May 2023 on Spanish-language social networks and, indeed, was shown in release news from Milenio TV channel on May 30. “The cartel member is allegedly seen with one of the most exclusive and powerful weapons, the Javelin, which is theoretically only sold to the military and was used, for example, in the invasion of Ukraine,” the announcer says in Spanish. However, the video does not show Javelin, and one of the grenade launcher models AT4 (aka M136), which has been produced by the Swedish company SAAB since the 1980s. Probably, the erroneous statement about the model of the grenade launcher is due to the fact that the supply of Javelin to Ukraine was dedicated huge number of publications since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.
At the same time, as can be seen from the text of the report, the presenter of the Mexican TV channel did not claim that the weapons were from Ukraine and did not specify at all how they ended up in the hands of the cartel. English-speaking users who shared the video incorrectly translated the TV presenter’s line and directly linked the grenade launcher from the video with Ukraine. On Twitter this is a distortion picked up the Russian embassy in Mexico, and then the Russian media and social network users developed the story into a version about direct sales of weapons by Kiev to Mexican drug traffickers.
As for the origin of the weapon, experts say there is an extremely low probability of its connection with the Ukrainians. AT4 has been in production for over 35 years and is officially located in service with 15 countries. AP Fact Checkers interviewed There are a number of experts on the arms trade, and they all agree that the most likely way AT4 grenade launchers fall into the hands of criminals is through direct deliveries from the United States or even from the warehouses of the Mexican army, which also uses these weapons. The fact that not a single case of weapons entering Mexico from Ukraine has been recorded, noted in an interview with the RTVI channel and the Ambassador of Mexico to the Russian Federation Eduardo Villegas Mejias.
At the same time, a retired American artilleryman and popular video blogger Ryan McBeth at all assertsthat the yellow markings of a grenade launcher are in the frame corresponds not a combat model, but a training model AT4, but the quality of the video does not allow one hundred percent confirmation of this hypothesis. Journalist Ioan Grillo, who specializes in covering the activities of drug cartels, analyzed the excitement around the viral video. notesthat Latin American drug traffickers own weapons of this level quite for a long time and regularly post videos of weapons and even murder scenes to demonstrate their strength. However, for the first time, a video from Narcos received such a response, “provoking a controversy about the war going on 6,000 miles away in Ukraine.”
Thus, there is no evidence that the combat or training AT4 grenade launcher, which ended up in the hands of the drug cartel, is in any way connected with the supply of weapons to Ukraine, and no such statements were made on the Milenio TV channel. Users of social networks and the Russian embassy in Mexico intentionally or by mistake misinterpreted the phrase of the announcer of a Mexican TV channel, which subsequently led to the dissemination of false information in the media.
Cover photo: still from Milenio channel news release
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