On Wednesday 4 June, at the end of the 28th meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group (UDCG, also known as Ramstein), Germany’s Defence Minister, Boris Pistorius, announced that its members would be focusing on collaborative projects to support Kyiv.
“We are convinced that we can redouble our efforts and respond more effectively to Ukraine’s expectations. That’s why we’ll be working on proposals and giving priority to collaborative projects. This will enable us to manage projects together that would be too ambitious for us individually”, he announced. According to the German minister, the proposals that will be made will also promote cooperation between Ukrainian industry and that of partner countries.
Mr Pistorius also called for better integration of the different support formats, the UDCG, the NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine (NSATU) and capacity coalitions. “Our teams will meet next week to begin this work”, he announced.
The Ukrainian Minister, Rustem Umerov, announced a ‘Ramstein Investment to Industries Initiative’ that will enable Ukrainian companies to invest in UDCG partner countries and companies from UDCG countries to build their factories in Ukraine. “Together we will manufacture drones, missiles, ammunitions and other weapons”, he explained.
Earlier in the day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on his partners to invest in his country’s defence industry by video conference. “Ukrainian industry still has significant untapped capacity. It just needs financing. (...) We only have $17 billion available for weapons procurement from our own national budget for our $35 billion industry, the founding gap is $18 billion", he stressed.
Mr Umerov said he hoped that the Ramstein initiative to invest in industry could be supported by the ‘SAFE’ programme, which has been agreed at EU level (see EUROPE 13649/23).
According to the British Defence Secretary, John Healey, at the meeting, Ukraine’s partners “made major commitments worth several billion euros to support Ukraine”, without being more specific. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)