As approval for any further billions of American taxpayer cash to Ukraine stalls in Congress, one of Washington’s top allies sees an opportunity for its own military industrial complex to cash in on the racket.
“The war economy is an opportunity for our industrialists. They have every interest in these tensions, because the ability to quickly deliver equipment will become one of the criteria for export success,” French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu told Le Parisien last week, saying the quiet part out loud in announcing the production of 78 new CAESAR howitzers for Kyiv within 15 months, alongside the 40 French made SCALP missiles just announced for Ukraine by French President Emmanuel Macron.
Who’s going to pay for them? Not France, apparently. Lecornu says they want to crowdfund $305 million for them from among Ukraine’s other allies. Won’t some generous souls please step up and stick it to Russia by stuffing the coffers of French weapons manufacturers and their shareholders?
“The logic of ceding material taken from the armies’ stocks is reaching its end,” Lecornu said.
Translation: We can’t use European Union taxpayer money anymore under Brussels’ scheme of giving EU nations the cash equivalent of any hand-me-down weapons that they gift to Ukraine.
And it’s not just the French state that’s looking at the Ukraine conflict as a cash cow, but some French civilians, too. The Russian Ministry of Defence announced that it had liquidated a nest of 60 foreign mercenaries in Kharkov — most of whom they qualified as French.
“France has no mercenaries, neither in Ukraine nor elsewhere,” the French Foreign Ministry said, calling it another “clumsy manipulation.”
Spare a thought for poor Stéphane Séjourné, who was just appointed Defence Minister on Jan. 11. He was probably still trying to find the washroom and coffee machine and didn’t yet have a chance to open the kimono on all the classified files to discover the extent to which the rhetoric peddled by him and his establishment pals is largely bunk. Like the notion that there cannot possibly be mercenaries in Ukraine because mercenary activities are illegal under French law, punishable by up to five years in prison and an €75,000 fine.
It wasn’t long before French Defence Minister Lecornu had to break it to everyone that, indeed, there are “French civilians who went to fight in Ukraine.” It’s not like he could really hide it. Mediapart, widely regarded as France’s top investigative news outlet, reported last year that some 400 French nationals — at least 30 of whom are considered neo-Nazis — have gone to fight in Ukraine, citing the French domestic intelligence service that has been tracking them.
The phenomenon has been discussed and amplified in the mainstream French press, so it’s not like anyone paying attention is going to now believe these fighters simply don’t exist. In one instance, a couple of 20-year-olds were convicted of weapons offenses and imprisoned on arrival by bus in Paris from Lviv last April, with Mediapart describing one as a neo-Nazi who was fired from the French army, and another as ultra-right.
Yet another French neo-Nazi pulled over by Hungarian police said that he was en route to fight in Ukraine, according to Le Parisien.
Seems that those Azov battalion neo-Nazis that had Canadian military trainers worried when they spotted Nazi symbol tattoos during training of Ukrainian fighters in 2018, according to the Ottawa Citizen, are a real Disneyland-style draw.
So how, you might ask, could France possibly weasel out of this mercenary accusation leveled by Russia? Well, it turns out that much like sparkling wine isn’t officially Champagne under French law if it isn’t specifically from the Champagne region of France, hired guns aren’t actually mercenaries if French law says that they aren’t. And French law allows for French civilians to go fight a foreign war for money, as long as they’re made part of the official army of another country. And it just so happens that Ukraine threw together a new “International Legion for the Defense of Ukraine” that covers this particular formality.
“These people have no connection with the French armed forces, do not wear French uniforms and are not associated with French military institutions,” Lecornu said. These hired guns are not from Champagne, so are not mercs. Case closed! Lecornu kindly asks everyone to please buzz off now, adding that any further discussion only serves Russia’s “information war.” Ah yes, the old “if you don’t agree with my version of reality, then you’re a Russian tool” line.
Meanwhile, Russia has summoned the French ambassador for a little chat, and perhaps an interpretive dance to explain why France’s much-vaunted anti-mercenary law, meant to secure peace, has a hole big enough for several French neo-Nazis to drive right through. Russia also apparently wants to know why France is getting more deeply involved in the conflict. But ultimately, for both the French state and its civilian hired guns in Ukraine, business is business.
Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of independently produced talk shows in French and English. Reach her via rachelmarsden.com. Her column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Lima News editorial board or AIM Media, owner of The Lima News.
