With Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the war in the Donbas region, new NATO military spending targets – 2% of gross domestic product by 2024, with 60% of that going to replacement equipment. for wages and pensions – seems modest. But even that is ignored by key member states.
In February, when the war in Ukraine began, many countries’ stockpiles were about half of what they expected, the NATO official said, and little progress had been made in creating weapons that could be used. NATO countries use interchangeably.
Even within the European Union, only 18 percent of defense spending by countries is cooperation.
For the NATO countries that have supplied a large amount of weapons to Ukraine, especially the front-line states such as Poland and the Baltics, the burden of replacing them becomes heavy.
For example, France has provided a number of advanced weapons and created a fund worth 200 million euros ($208 million) for Ukraine to buy weapons made in France. But France has supplied at least 18 modern Caesar howitzers to Ukraine – about 20% of the country’s total existing artillery – and is reluctant to supply more.
European Union approved 3.1 billion euros ($3.2 billion) debt repayment to member states for what they give Ukraine, but that fund, the European Peace Facility, is almost 90% depleted.
In total, NATO countries have so far supplied about $40 billion in weapons to Ukraine, roughly equal to France’s annual defense budget.
Another NATO official said the smaller nations had exhausted their potential, with 20 of the organization’s 30 members “pretty heavily exploited”. But the remaining 10 countries can still offer more, he suggested, especially larger allies. That would include France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.
