About arms sales in Ukraine
15.06.2026
Replica. Apologists for the free sale of weapons to the population, presenting their arguments, only emphasize the fact: people in Ukraine have extremely low social capital and negotiating power.
The historical examples they cite as arguments (although the example is not proof) must be considered and coordinated precisely with the existing context - low social capital and negligible bargaining power.
It may seem that possession of weapons will solve, change this circumstance. This is not so, because low social capital and bargaining power of a person are a multifactorial tool that is much more powerful than the presence of weapons. Therefore, as a result, we will get what happened with “voucher privatization”: with low bargaining power and social capital of a person, as a result of such privatization, we received oligarchic property.
The same will happen with the free sale of weapons. If the social capital and bargaining power of people are not filled with formal norms (at least accountability and control by the authorities), then as a result we will get an “oligarchic” privatization of the instruments of state violence. We will get legalized armed “oligarchic” gangs-clientele.
Then the current apologists for the free sale of small arms will start talking about the free sale of heavy weapons to the population: machine guns, anti-tank guns, armored personnel carriers, and tanks.
People's negotiating power cannot be strengthened with tools of violence; these must be real mechanisms of responsibility and accountability of the authorities; these must be all possible tools of the broadest dialogue with the market; these must be institutions of society as carriers and moderators of such dialogue.
Does anyone really think that the results of voucher privatization would be different if people were armed? They, the results, would be the same, only there would be much more real bloodshed. This situation was eloquently described by the American “business philosopher” Jim Rohn: “If you took all the money in the world and divided it equally among everyone, it would soon end up in the same pockets as before.”
Money is "taken" from "these pockets" not by weapons, but by dialogue.
Valentin Tkach
