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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
France, Germany, 10 EU Nations Sold Defense Kit To Russia In Breach Of Own Embargoes
2022-04-23
[RepublicWorld] France, Germany, and at least 10 other European nations sold £230million worth of military hardware and defensive kits to Moscow which was used by Kremlin during the war in Ukraine, an EU analysis revealed. The selling of the weapon systems was apparently ’illegal’ under the EU embargo that bans the arms sale to Russia after the 2014 annexation of Crimea by the Russians. Primarily, France, Germany and Italy have exploited the loophole in the arms embargo and exported missiles, rockets, guns and bombs to Moscow, as first reported by UK’s The Telegraph.

EU NATIONS FLOWED ARMS TO MOSCOW IN BREACH OF OWN EMBARGO IMPOSED POST CRIMEAN ANNEXATION
The wide ranging report revealed that EU nations evaded the sanctions that banned "the direct or indirect sale, supply, transfer or export of arms and related material of all types, including weapons and ammunition, military vehicles and equipment, paramilitary equipment, and spare parts, therefore, to Russia."

The embargo was inacted by European Union eight years ago, however, the EU nations flowed in hundreds of millions of dollars worth of arms in breach of the contracts signed before August 1, 2014, as per the report. France sold defence equipment to Russia worth €152 million as part of 76 export licences, pushing the total sales to €1billion by Europe. Germany had been supplying Russia with tanks and howitzers that were used by the Russian troops in its special military intervention in Ukraine.

GERMAN CHANCELLOR FACES BLACKLASH OVER 'DOUBLE STANDARDS'
The report comes at a time when Germany’s chancellor is facing growing pressure to authorise the delivery of heavy weaponry to Ukraine as Russia enters the second phase of the military offensive in the eastern Donbass region and Southern Ukraine. While Olaf Scholz’s coalition partners accused the German leader of failing to assist Ukraine, an EU ally with more advanced arms, citing German defence policy on weapons, the explosive report finds that Berlin assisted Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. This is in contrast to many other NATO countries that have scrambled to supply vital armaments to Kyiv to deter Moscow’s aggression on its territory.

"Ukraine crisis is entirely engineered by Russia and President Putin as an overt act of coercion against Ukraine," Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley had said at a briefing. But Germany, in addition to Russia, sold South Korea heavy weaponry to deter DPRK’s Kim Jong Un regime. German arms supply peaked in 2017 in the crisis hit Korean Peninsula as it rampantly supplied cruise missiles and howitzers to fuel South Korea’s offensives against the North. Berlin recently agreed to provide Ukraine with £830million in aid, adding that sending heavy arms would not only upset Putin but could lead to nuclear war. EU had continued arms supply to Moscow, fuelling the crisis.

UK PRESSURIZES INDIA TO FLOW WEAPONS TO EASTERN EU
Just recently, the deputy commander of Russia's central military
district, Rustam Minnekayev, said that Moscow plans to establish a corridor between Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula which Russia annexed in 2014, and the Donbas region, indicating that its brutal war might spill over to other occupied regions. The UK meanwhile, which is looking to backfill British tanks to Poland for its supply to Ukraine had recently expressed concerns about prospects of India’s export of spare military parts to Russia, and that the latter could evade an international arms embargo in this way.

UK’s Prime Minister in his speech made during his India visit told reporters here: "We’re looking at sending tanks to Poland to help them as they sending some of their T-72s to Ukraine." In what may have been under the West’s pressure, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi agreed to "contemplate" sending Challenger 2 tanks to eastern Europe to replace Soviet-era T-72 tanks that were deployed by the UK in the Iraq War.
Posted by:Thing From Snowy Mountain

#10  tw: that's good.

Darth: Of course, the trolls never show up for threads like this, it's the crude facts they're trying to distract from.
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain   2022-04-23 22:41  

#9  I didn't say I was surprised by anything. I just got tired of the "the world will end because you dared resist the mighty Putin!" when The West is only pretending to resist Putin.
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain   2022-04-23 22:40  

#8   but not to reformat into something readable

Formatting fixed. Unless you wanted more than subheads marked out, Snowy Thing.
Posted by: trailing wife   2022-04-23 15:17  

#7  Remember when the left was anti-war?

Good times..
Posted by: M. Murcek   2022-04-23 15:08  

#6  And we're not supposed to talk about the destruction of the domestic US energy business.
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain   2022-04-23 14:58  

#5  We are ruining the quality of life and future prosperity of our country in a vain attempt to stop something that ends being funded by our collective efforts (Russian energy). YJCMTSU!
Posted by: NoMoreBS   2022-04-23 12:27  

#4  And why is anyone surprised by this?
Posted by: DarthVader   2022-04-23 11:59  

#3  "We didn't sell them directly to Russia! We sold them to Iran who was going to...oh, wait, that's not better.
Nevermind"
Posted by: Frank G   2022-04-23 11:35  

#2  Dual use will keep ze Cherman economy afloat!
Posted by: M. Murcek   2022-04-23 11:03  

#1  I give up. I can see well enough to copy and paste, but not to reformat into something readable, especially when the text box remains black-on-white.
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain   2022-04-23 10:57  

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