NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced, on Thursday 15 February at the close of the meeting of Allied defence ministers, that the Allies were stepping up their military support for Ukraine. The Allies account for 99% of the military aid received by Ukraine.
At the NATO/Ukraine Council, the Ukrainian Minister, Roustem Oumerov, informed the Allies of the latest developments on the ground and the Allies discussed the importance of their continued support, according to Mr Stoltenberg. “We will continue to stand by Ukraine, for Ukraine’s security and for our own”, he promised once again.
“Today we decided to create a new NATO-Ukraine Joint Analysis, Training and Education Centre in Bydgoszcz, Poland. It will allow Ukraine to share lessons learned from Russia’s war and will create a structure for Ukrainian forces to learn and train alongside their allied counterparts”, announced the Secretary General, while acknowledging that many details still needed to be decided. He specified that this decision would be implemented over the coming weeks and months, hoping for a final decision from the Allied Heads of State or Government at their summit in Washington from 9 to 11 July.
The Secretary General also recalled the latest announcements from Allies, including new aid programmes from Canada, Finland and Norway, “covering key capabilities such as F-16 equipment and spare parts, as well as air defence”.
At the meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group on 14 February, the German, French, Danish and Belgian ministers launched the coalition in support of Ukraine’s air defence.
Furthermore, according to Mr Stoltenberg, a group of Allies is meeting with the aim of delivering one million drones to Ukraine, and twenty Allies have also agreed to form a demining coalition. Further announcements could be made when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visits Germany and France on Friday 16 February. In Paris, he will sign a security agreement with his counterpart, Emmanuel Macron.
“We are in a critical phase, spring is coming and Ukraine needs a signal from its peers”, Estonian Minister Hanno Pevkur stressed on 14 February.
On his arrival at the ministerial meeting, the NATO Secretary General said that the failure of the United States to vote for a new support package for Ukraine was already having an impact on the ground. “We are already seeing the impact of the fact that the United States has not been able to make a decision”, he said, while the previous day the US National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, had announced that he was “hearing more and more often that the Ukrainian army is rationing ammunition, or even running out of it on the front line”.
The Allies also discussed increasing ammunition production. “We need to move from the slow pace of peacetime to the high pace of production demanded by the conflict”, stressed Mr Stoltenberg, adding that, to do this, manufacturers needed signed contracts.
The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, warned that within the EU, “all Member States must be persuaded to increase their arms supplies and develop (their) industrial capacity. It’s urgent. We must continue to supply ammunition”, he insisted.
In addition to supporting Ukraine, the Allies have “accelerated work on our new defence plans and on strengthening our transatlantic defence industrial base”, according to Mr Stoltenberg. Specifying that these objectives required investment, he recalled that the Allies had made progress in their budgetary efforts in favour of defence (see EUROPE 13350/20). 18 Allies are expected to devote 2% of their national GDP to the project this year.
The French Minister for the Armed Forces, Sebastien Lecornu, announced that France will reach the 2% target this year. Until now, the 2% target was set for 2025. “The real issue now is not so much getting that 2%. (...) It is to ensure, obviously, that this 2% of GDP is genuinely useful in the military field”, he added. He also pointed out that France was spending 30% on investment in equipment, compared with NATO indicators of 20%. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)