MOSCOW, Nov 24 Almost 179 thousand firearms were lost or stolen on the territory of Ukraine since February 2022, the Ukrainian analytical resource OpenDatabot reported on Friday.
The resource refers to data from the Ukrainian registry of lost and stolen weapons, which takes into account data on both civilian and military weapons. 
Yesterday, 16:12InfographicsMap of the special operation of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine on 11/23/2023View
“Since the beginning of the great war, 178,818 units of lost and stolen weapons have been recorded — this is 30% of the total number of weapons in the registry for all time,” says the material published on the Opendatabot website.
The material notes that the vast majority of weapons — 80% were lost, and only 20% were stolen.
The leaders in terms of the number of units in the registry are the AK-74 and the Makarov pistol.
In February 2022, Ukrainian authorities allowed civilians to own firearms. In Kyiv alone, after the start of the special operation, representatives of the Ukrainian government uncontrollably distributed more than 25 thousand firearms and over 1 million rounds of ammunition to citizens.
Subsequently, the Ukrainian authorities repeatedly appealed to citizens demanding that they hand over the weapons they had received.
Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin called its goal “the protection of people who have been subjected to abuse and genocide by the Kyiv regime for eight years.” He noted that the special operation was a forced measure, Russia “was left no chance to do otherwise, security risks were created such that it was impossible to respond by other means.” According to him, Russia has been trying for 30 years to come to an agreement with NATO on the principles of security in Europe, but in response it has been faced with either cynical deception and lies, or attempts at pressure and blackmail, while the alliance, meanwhile, despite Moscow’s protests, is steadily expanding and approaching borders of the Russian Federation.