Greece is increasing its order of Dassault-made Rafale jets to 24 from 18, France’s Defence Minister said on Sunday, a day after the Greek Prime Minister announced the planned purchase during his speech at Thessaloniki International Fair.
“Excellent news. Greece has just announced its intention to buy six extra Rafales. Together we are pushing ahead to build a truly autonomous Europe,” Florence Parly said on Twitter.
Excellente nouvelle : la Grèce vient d’annoncer son intention d'acquérir 6 Rafale supplémentaires. Ensemble, nous avançons pour construire une véritable autonomie européenne.
— Florence Parly (@florence_parly) September 12, 2021
Greek lawmakers in January approved the purchase of 18 Rafale jets from France for 2.5 billion euros ($3.04 billion)
Athens has beefed up its military purchases in recent months as it moves ahead with plans to raise its military capacity during a dispute with neighboring Turkey over energy resources in the Mediterranean, reuters noted.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced the Rafale purchase plan right at the beginning of his economic policy speech and got anyone by surprise – probably also Parly. He did not elaborate on the issue.
Meanwhile, Germany is selling their historic partner in genocidal crimes and a Turkish dictator submarines.
Either you are with us or against us, and in light of the S400 purchase, perhaps America should sanction Germany starting with VW, Porsche, Audi, Mercedes, etc., imports by these totalitarian trade and emissions cheats holding a Europe hostage that they already tried to destroy twice.
Or is maintaining nukes at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey and ties take a precedence over a Naval presence at Souda.
Playing Greece against Turkey is as bad as Turkey playing the US against Russia!
Nor should Syria or Afghanistan been handled so feebly as Precepes or rolling over on democracy / a refererendum after illegally closed banks.
Britain was wise to leave because this is not a West that Greece founded is all about. Give us freedom because there is no other alternative. If America is back to reinstitute fairness, it would do well to look at developments of unlawful bullies and the right thing to do than easy choices while withdrawing from global armed conflict to allow Russia and China to mockingly eat our pie.
Don’t suppose they’ve bought any firefighter planes while they were at it?