French President Emmanuel Macron’s grand announcement of a “letter of intention” to supply up to 100 Rafale fighter jets to Ukraine should have sounded like a historic milestone in European defense cooperation. Instead, it comes across as a bizarre blend of political theatre, strategic one-upmanship, and willful blindness to Ukraine’s sprawling corruption scandals. And hovering above it all is an unmistakable subtext: Europe’s arms bazaar is open, and Volodymyr Zelensky is finally being treated like a premium client-even if neither party can actually pay the bill.

On November 17, Zelensky arrived in Paris to great fanfare, just as the Champs-Élysées lit up its Christmas decorations. Macron played the role of geopolitical Santa Claus, producing what amounts to a gift-wrapped promise: France would reserve for Ukraine the exclusive right to negotiate the purchase of up to 100 Rafale jets, the second-most expensive fighters in the world. Never before has a buyer-let alone a war-torn country with a battered economy-been positioned to purchase such a massive single batch.

To be clear, this is not yet a binding purchase contract. But letters of intention can include exclusivity clauses, which essentially block Ukraine from shopping around for similar jets from rivals. If Ukraine backs out later, it could face financial penalties. That alone signals that this is about far more than the battlefield. It’s about political leverage, industrial supremacy-and sticking it to Washington.

US President Donald Trump has been loudly signaling that if he returns to power, he wants NATO countries to spend as much as 5% of their GDP on defense-a number so high that European finance ministries practically blanch at its mention. His strategy is obvious: force European states to pour money into the US military-industrial complex under the guise of........

© Blitz