President Francois Hollande refused to sanction the sale of two state of the art helicopter warships to Russia following the latter's involvement in Ukraine. With compensation due of over 900 million euros it seemed an expensive if principled decision. Now Egypt has agreed to buy the two Mistral class ships for the same sum. Given that follow-on work for maintenance and weapons will arise it seems a good solution for France. Egypt also became the first customer for the French built Rafale fighter plane last year.
There must be some concern about Egypt's democratic status, but perhaps Poutine (as the French write Putin) merited the chastisement.
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