No Mistrals For Putin

On Otwarty Dialog:  Albo Mistrale dla Rosji, albo antyrakiety dla Polski – demonstracja On Informnapalm:  31.10.2014, Albo Mistrale dla Rosji, albo antyrakiety dla Polski On Gazeta UA:  Поляки збунтувались проти передачі Росії французьких "Містралів" Polish activists demand from Poland's Ministry of Defence to exclude French Eurosam consortium (composed of Thales and MBDA) from pending contracts for supplies to the Polish military, unless France cancels the Mistral deal. The choice should be simple - by delivering Mistrals to Russia France should lose Polish military market! Procurement currently pending is for a contract valued at ca. 6,5 bn euros.  More contracts are planned. Euromaidan Warsaw  and the  Open Dialog Fundation  organised a protest today, the 31st of October, at 2:30pm in front of the Ministry of Defense in Warsaw. Link to the FB event: https://www.facebook.com/events/357261494448128/ Translation of the Polish text: Last week...

Protest in front of the Mistral "Vladivostok" in St Nazaire Sept 2014. Photo: Pierre Raimbault The goals of the French arms industry are 7 billion euros of exported arms per year. If France goes ahead and delivers the Mistral war ships to Russia, the countries that are directly threatened by Putin having such powerful weapon will most likely react by not buying any arms from the French market. For Poland alone, France will kick itself out of  a market of more than 21 billion euros , three years of the total goal for the French arms industry if it does not cancel the Mistral deal. As the newspaper "Le Monde" was underlining  in a recent article , the French market is actually focused on the Middle East countries but the Russian open invasion of Ukraine has brought an increasing interest in Lituania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Romania and a few other countries to increase their efforts to upgrade their military systems in order to be able to face...

(Version française) A lot has been said and written about the French delivery of "Mistral" war ships to Russia. People often point out the lack of morality of French authorities who in fear of a loss of income still provide the ships to Russian empire, against the demand of the free world to stop the deal. Let’s not focus on the moral side of the Mistral deal and look into its negative consequences for the French arms industry instead. French defend their decision by claiming that breaking the contract would undermine their credibility as a business partner, especially in the context of a $15 - $20 billion still not signed contract of supplying 126 Rafale fighter aircrafts to the Indian Air Force. Yes, the French armament industry can easily lose other lucrative contracts of far greater value than the Russian one. For example military equipment for Poland which is intensively upgrading its defensive abilities. The Polish government plans to spend ...