The journalistic consortium Investigate Europe revealed the existence of arms sales from EU countries to Moscow despite the embargo since 2014
After the existence of these businesses was made public, the EU has closed the door that was left open to the sale of arms in the EU sanctions system
–
when the past mes April the EU carried out the fifth package of sanctioning measures against Vladimir Putin’s Russia by illegal invasion against Ukrainethe European countries put a definitive patch that closed a significant drain of the sanctioning system imposed against Moscow since 2014.
–
That year, Russia illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula. Immediately afterwards, they were erected with what is considered at this point an unquestionable Moscow’s support for the self-proclaimed pro-Russian People’s Republics of Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR)from which the Russian Army is now launching its offensive in eastern Ukraine. That gave rise, in 2014, to the first European sanctions against Russia, which included an embargo on arms exports.
–
However, as reported by the international journalistic consortium Investigate Europe in March, those sanctions did not stop European arms exports to Russia. It’s more, the contracts that were signed before the first day of August 2014, according to the date set by the EU States, did not lose validity.
–
Its conditions could be met and, therefore, between 2015 and 2020, a dozen EU countries continued to sell war material or material for civil and military use to Russia. At that time, the war between the kyiv authorities against the DPR and the RPL – before the Russian invasion – turned into the bloodiest war experienced in the ‘old continent’ since the Balkan wars.
–
In those five years, the ten European countries that Investigate Europe points out that the main sellers of weapons to Russia pocketed a total of 346 million euros of weapons. about those guns “there are clues that they could have been used in Ukraine”, according to the headline of the Berlin newspaper The daily mirrorthe German general newspaper that is part of the aforementioned international journalistic consortium.
–
Among those clues could be counted the pieces of the German company Bosch denounced by Ukraine as present in the war vehicles with which Russia has carried out its invasion. Germany, in fact, is among the countries that have most taken advantage of the loophole left by the 2014 sanctionsaccording to Investigate Europe.
–
According to the weekly Der Spiegel, Germany has opened an investigation to determine how parts from the German technology giant Bosch came to be used in Russian infantry vehicles sent to war against Ukraine.
✍?@SmmEnBerlin https://t.co/ckvxV6Knay— NIUS (@NiusDiario) April 17, 2022
–
Until 121.8 million euros worth of weapons Germany sold to Russia between 2015 and 2020. Only France exceeds that record, with €152 million. Spain also appears in the group of countries that sold material for military use to Russia in that period of time. “But the amount from Spain is very small, very insignificant”they tell NIUS from Investigate Europe.
–
Missiles, torpedoes, warships, among other things
Precisely in France, the medium online galo Disclosereported in March on these businesses, pointing out that the French weapons sent to Russia, despite the sanctions regime, allowed Vladimir Putin modernize its “fleet of combat tanks, planes and helicopters”. Specifically through the sale, among others, of thermal cameras model Catherine FC and Catherine XP for armored vehicles of the firm Thales y Sigma 95N navigation systems for Safran company aircraft.
–
The sales of this type of material could be agreed before 2014, but, due to the European sanctions system, deliveries after that year were allowed. In the French case they occurred until 2020, according to Disclose.
–
In the German case, German sales “They consisted of icebreakers, but also rifles and ‘special protection’ vehicles that were sent to Ukraine,” as pointed out in Investigate Europe. Even “missiles, torpedoes and warships” were delivered to Russia between 2015 and 2020, it collects in Investigate Europe.
–
“Some measures can cause their opposite effect”
In the latest publication of the consortium on these sales, it is realized how, in the fifth package of EU sanctions against Russia, the definitive closure of the legal vacuum that allowed exports between 2015 and 2020 is “hidden” among these measures. “The EU closed the loophole on arms sales to Russia after it was revealed,” they point out in the journalistic consortium.
–
“It is important that journalism is able to show that, on occasion, some measures that political leaders can take actually generate legal loopholes that produce the opposite of what is sought”tells NIUS from Lisbon the Portuguese journalist Paulo Penamember of the team of Investigate Europe.
–
A large part of the accounts that lead the consortium to add European arms sales to Russia worth 346 million euros are public. Pena and company have reached that number by consulting files of authorities from the ten States scrutinized. They have had to overcome the many barriers that some countries put up when reporting on their arms exports.
–
An open door to arms sales to Russia
“Decisions such as the embargo are made in the European Council of the European Union, which is the European body that brings together the Heads of State and Government. There is a rule that is the secret of the meetings”Pena remembers. “Also, you have to keep in mind that states are very nationalistic when it comes to exporting weapons. Every country wants to do their business on their own.” abunda.
–
That could explain why it ended up being written as an exception in the document on the EU embargo on exports to Russia. “those contracts closed before August 1, 2014 or the complementary contracts to fulfill them”. Those words were an “open door” to arms sellers to Russia, according to Pena.
–
Nevertheless, Investigate Europe He made it known and, although Russia’s war against Ukraine had started for almost six weeks, the EU has ended up closing the road to those businesses.
—
