Summary As Washington prepares to release the first of $1.3 billion in aid to Colombia, the country's leftist guerrillas are preparing for a wider war. In the last 18 months, they have stockpiled huge amounts of weapons with the assistance of a global arms network, particularly from Russian organized crime. The major guerrilla armies are set to take the battlefield with some 45,000 weapons in their arsenals. Analysis As the United States ratchets up its role in helping Colombia fight drug traffickers and insurgents, the fingerprints of Russian organized criminals appear more frequently. For nearly a decade, the Russian mafia, or mafiya, has been trading weapons and cash to Colombian drug cartels in exchange for cocaine and heroin. In recent months, however, several discoveries suggest Colombian narcotics-for-weapons trade deeply involves Russian criminals, motivated by profit.