No matter where you stand on Ukraine, you'd have to recognize this is extremely problematic. Not even 3 months ago this guy was Ukraine's Minister of Defence, meaning in charge of weapons procurement, including from Palantir - the company whose CEO is now the lead investor in his new private venture. That alone should raise eyebrows, and not in a small way... But also think about it from a European taxpayer's standpoint. EU taxpayers have given literally hundreds of billions to Ukraine's war effort, much of it spent buying American defense technology - including from Palantir. And now the expertise that spending generated is being privatized by those same Americans, and will likely be sold back to Europeans as a product. There is a common talking point in Europe that goes "sure we're spending an eyewatering amount of money to support Ukraine but it's also an investment in European strategic autonomy - Ukraine's battlefield innovations will feed Europe's future defense capacity." I'm not making it up, that's a real argument made by serious people, for instance the German Council on Foreign Relations (dgap.org/en/research/publica…): "The defense-industrial integration of Ukrainian innovation with European production and funding capacity bears huge potential for Europe’s collective security. Increased cooperation would give the EU and Ukraine greater autonomy from the US." This deal illustrates perfectly just how wrong that argument is turning out to be. The first major privatization of Ukraine's defense expertise is... an American-owned startup. Lastly there is the Palantir angle, a company so problematic that many, if not most, major European countries - such as France, the Netherlands, Switzerland and even Germany - are actively cutting ties with it, citing threats to data sovereignty and national security. And yet somehow the man who ran Ukraine's defense with Europe's money - the single most expensive investment Europe made in several generations - is delivering the fruits of that investment to Palantir's CEO in a private deal. Make it make sense 🤷 So, long story short, this is yet another chapter in what is becoming Europe's defining story: being the incompetent sucker in the room.