Will guns from Ukraine end up on the streets of Britain?

While visiting a Ukrainian militia this summer, I nearly trod on an anti-tank mine which was being used as a doorstop at the entrance to their HQ. ‘Don’t worry, it’s a broken Russian one that we found,’ said my breezy host, Eduard Leonov. ‘We’re trying to fix it so we can use it.’

Eduard’s militia isn’t exactly the SAS of Ukraine’s forces. It’s a volunteer army and he himself is a folk-singer-turned-fighter in his fifties. Eduard’s dozen-odd comrades are Dad’s Army age, yet even so they still have a formidable arsenal – everything from grenade launchers to Kalashnikovs.

I thought about Eduardo when Scotland Yard issued their recent warning about guns from Ukraine’s war finding their way on to Britain’s streets. There are ‘huge amounts of weapons’ in Ukraine which could fall into the hands of either criminals or terrorists, said Matt Twist, a senior counter-terrorism officer. Britain’s police, he said, were working hard to stop them coming in.