France Ramps Up Weapons Production for Ukraine and Says Russia is Scrutinizing the West's Mettle
by John Leicester
January 18, 2024
Introduction:
(ABC) PARIS -- France announced more planned deliveries of its Caesar artillery system to Ukraine on Thursday and accelerating weapons manufacturing as it seeks to avoid depleting its own military stocks while continuing to support the war effort against Russia’s invasion.
“The logic of ceding materiel taken from the armies' stocks is reaching its end,” the French defense minister, Sébastien Lecornu, said in an interview with Le Parisien. “From now on, the solution is to directly connect French defense industries with the Ukrainian army.”
France also launched a drive to fund the delivery of 78 Caesar self-propelled 155 mm howitzers to Ukraine this year. Ukraine has already paid for six of the guns itself and France will provide 50 million euros (US$ 54 million) to deliver 12 more, Lecornu said separately in a speech. France is also seeking 280 million euros ($305 million) from other allies of Ukraine to pay for the 60 other Caesars, the minister said.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, speaking by video link, said Russian forces are firing five times more artillery shells, even 10 times more in some places, than Ukrainian forces along the front lines and that stronger artillery “is one of our key needs to win this war.”
“Shortage of ammunition, shell hunger, is a very real and pressing problem," he said.
Read more here:
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireSt ... 06472953
caltrek’s comment: I suppose some are going to point to this as an example of Western Europe breaking out into a sweat (metaphorically speaking) in its continued effort to support the Ukraine. To me, it is just a further illustration of both sides losing. Think of how much better off both sides would be if this effort were diverted to more peaceful ends.
For what benefit is there to Russia? So that Putin can “have a war trophy”?
Putin is hoping future historians will look upon him as a great leader who restored some of Russia’s honor. What he does not seem to realize is that his nihilistic ways are apt to lead to a world in which there are no historians around to remember the past. First, because of the heightened threat of full-scale nuclear war. Second, even if that is avoided so much attention and resources will diverted away from the problem of global climate change that a collapse of civilization may occur.
Even if those two calamities are averted, more honor would have come to Putin if he had simply continued to do more to restore Russia’s economy.
So, as I have written before, nobody is a “winner.”
Putin and his cronies are certainly nothing but idiotic losers.
Don't mourn, organize.
-Joe Hill
