500 Patriots for Kyiv: Washington sells, Ukraine pays, delivery will have to wait

The facts first. According to Le Monde, Washington has approved the sale of 500 Patriot missiles to Ukraine, for an amount equivalent to more than $2 billion. The US Congress still has to rubber-stamp the deal. The Ukrainian president, for his part, is worried about the timetable: delivery could come only "in a few years".

The rest is our reading.

Note the word: sale. Not a gift, not "aid". A contract. Cui bono? First of all those who make the missiles, those who finance their production and those who hold shares in them. The dispatch names no manufacturer and no one paying for the deal: we do not yet know who settles the bill, whether Kyiv, its European backers or some other mechanism. The question remains open, and it is decisive.

For the heart of the matter is here. A country at war is buying interceptors it needs now, and it is told delivery is measured in years. As air defence goes, it is a bit like selling an umbrella after the rainy season. But for an order book, it is a windfall: guaranteed demand, spread out, solid.

Lenin's framework helps here. In the imperialist phase, the great powers and their industrial and financial blocs compete for markets and spheres of influence; arms contracts, sanctions and alliances are the political wrapping. A contract worth more than $2 billion ties Ukraine to the American military-industrial apparatus for a long time: parts, maintenance, munitions, dependence. The alliance is paid for, and it creates a customer.

Then there is Congress. It recalls what Lenin said of the state: an instrument in the service of the ruling class, not an arbiter above the fray. Its votes, its delays and its electoral calculations set the pace of a war being fought in Kharkiv or Kyiv. Decisions over the fate of Ukrainians are taken in Washington, to an agenda that is not theirs. A sober observation: those who endure the strikes have no say over the delivery date.

We will, of course, be told about defending the law and a rules-based order. Such phrases usually cover very concrete interests, what Lenin called defending the aims of "one's own" bourgeoisie under fine names. We are not saying Russia's aggression is a fiction: we are saying the Western response is also a matter of markets.

What we still do not know: the precise timetable, the payment terms, any counterparts. What we do know: when delivery is counted in years, it is the order book that gets served first, and air defence afterwards.