French, German Companies Sent Weapons to Moscow: Report

ATHENS — A new report claims that France and Germany sold nearly $295 million worth of military hardware to Moscow, including missiles, bombs, and guns that are likely being used in Ukraine. That figure was supplied by a European Union analysis shared with London’s Telegraph newspaper, which reported late Friday night that the countries took advantage of a loophole in an EU-wide embargo on arms shipments to Russia imposed in the wake of Moscow’s annexation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea in 2014. Earlier this month the European Commission was forced to close that loophole after it was found that at least 10 EU member states exported almost $378 million in hardware to Vladimir Putin’s regime, the Telegraph reported, with an estimated 78 percent of that total supplied by German and French companies.The Times of London appeared to corroborate the claim and added that it was Investigate Europe, a team of journalists working across the continent, who first reported on the arms sales, in which Italy also had a leading role. According to Investigate Europe, the EU arms shipments to Russia continued “until at least 2020.” Within hours of its publication, the bombshell report was picked up by media across Britain and was generating intrigue on social media. Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has come under mounting criticism in recent days due to his steadfast refusal to supply Kyiv with the kinds of heavy weapons it has been clamoring for, and that have been more readily forthcoming from Washington and London. Poland’s former prime minister, Donald Tusk, tweeted that the Germans would have to do a lot more for Ukraine “if we are to believe that they have drawn the conclusions from their history.”The disclosures come at a delicate time for France, too, as voters prepare to go to the polls on Sunday for the second round of voting in that country’s presidential election. The far-right candidate, Marine Le Pen, has come under fire for allegedly having taken loans for her political party from a Russian bank with close ties to the Kremlin. If the timing of the Investigate Europe report is accurate, French arms sales to Russia were under way for multiple years of incumbent Emmanuel Macron’s term in office. Mr. Macron has served as French president since May 2017. According to the Voice of America, Germany defended the sales by saying that the items were “dual-use” equipment and that Russia had said they were needed for civilian, not military, use. Since the Kremlin’s march on Ukraine on February 24, however, the world has had something of an eye-opener on just what kind of opinion Mr. Putin has of civilians. The VOA added that it was a Romanian member of the European parliament, Cristian Terheș, who first shared the findings of the probe with the Telegraph. Precisely how or by what mechanism the EU counties were able to avoid the embargo for so long before being found out was not made immediately clear, though via Twitter, Investigate Europe said that each year EU member states are “supposed” to share arms export data with the European Council at Brussels.

French, German Companies Sent Weapons to Moscow: Report

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