By Jared Keller

The U.S. military did not properly maintain accountability for thousands of pieces of equipment transferred to the government of Ukraine as part of the former's security assistance program in the aftermath of Russia's invasion, according to a new government watchdog report.

The assessment from the Defense Department's inspector general published on Monday states that military personnel responsible for rapidly transferring material to Ukraine through an aerial port in Jasionka, Poland, "did not fully implement their standard operating procedures to account for defense items and could not confirm the quantities of defense items received against the quantity of items shipped" in three of five shipments examined by defense officials.

The inconsistent implementation of standard gear accountability procedures occurred primarily due to U.S. military personnel failing to fill out the necessary paperwork for defense material transferred to Ukrainian forces, according to the assessment, a problem compounded by a lack of logistics training for inexperienced personnel on the part of commanders.

In one case, a shipment containing "thousands of small arms, night vision optic devices, and various types of cold weather gear" turned up in Jasionka without a manifest, forcing U.S. military personnel to crack open shipping crates and count items by hand with no real frame of reference for how many items they were supposed to receive in the first place.

As a result of these issues, there was an "increased risk" that the U.S. military is providing "more or less equipment" than authorized and "may not be able to verify" the specific number of defense materials sent to Ukraine, according to the DOD IG report, which emphasized that "although we identified gaps in accountability that increase risk, we did not find any evidence of loss, theft, or diversion of defense items being provided to Ukraine during the course of our evaluation."