European Commission allows Ukraine to buy Patriot missiles with EU loan originally restricted to European-made weapons

Filed 1h ago · Via Meduza · The Buffoon Desk

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Manic Polka

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: UNCTAD · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

The European Commission approved a 6.1 billion euro transfer under the Ukraine Support Loan program, clearing Ukraine to buy PAC-3 interceptor missiles for its Patriot systems using European loan money. The loan's own rules require at least 65% European or Ukrainian components, a threshold American-made Patriot missiles don't meet, so the Commission granted a specific carve-out, the sixth such exception it has issued.

Kyiv is contracting for roughly 1,000 Patriot missiles, but much of that order won't arrive for years, and officials are now discussing a swap where allies hand over missiles from their own stockpiles now in exchange for future Ukrainian batches. The shortage is considered one of the most serious threats to Ukraine's air defense heading into a winter when Russia is expected to intensify strikes on energy infrastructure.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A rule with six exceptions is really just a suggestion wearing a rule's clothes. Nobody's against Ukraine getting missiles that actually work, but writing a strict local-content law and then quietly punching holes in it every few months tells you the law was aspirational from the start. Might as well have written 'buy European, mostly, unless it's the thing that shoots down the missile.'

Source: Read the original at Meduza → Scored: Manic Polka · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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