NATO and the EU launch a coordination mechanism to speed up arms purchases for Ukraine

BRUSELAS, 21 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) -

NATO and the EU will launch a coordination mechanism to speed up arms purchases for Ukraine, with a view to increasing military support for Kiev in the face of Russian aggression and developing a purchasing system that is "effective, transparent and responsible".

The appointment this Tuesday between the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Dimitro Kuleba, has served to stage unity and coordination in the objective of accelerating military production and the delivery of weapons and ammunition to Kiev.

In this sense, Stoltenberg has assured in a joint press conference that NATO will launch a cooperation mechanism to develop a purchasing system that is "effective, transparent and responsible". "We have discussed the need to increase production and improve our purchasing systems," he argued, explaining that NATO, the EU and Ukraine will bring together purchasing experts to study ways of cooperating to ensure that all the weapons that he needs in his military contest against Russia.

As Borrell explained, the issue has to do with accelerating production capacity to manufacture weapons and ammunition, since the military industry in Europe, designed for peacetime, does not keep pace with the needs of the Ukrainian Army on the ground.

On this point, he has defended that the EU can take steps in this direction quickly if it has the political will of its Member States, stressing that it can use the European Mechanism for Peace, the extra-budgetary fund with which the EU has endowed arms to Ukraine since the start of the war.

"That is what we are trying", he said, after pointing out that the decision should not follow "any complex procedure", stressed the head of European diplomacy. The next steps in this regard are expected at the meeting of the bloc's defense ministers on March 7 and 8 in Sweden, when progress is expected on a joint purchase model to provide 155-mm caliber ammunition to Ukraine. On the table is the Estonian proposal to provide 4,000 million euros to the aforementioned instrument to acquire around one million rounds of artillery projectiles.

"There is a lack of procedures and understanding of how it should work," the Ukrainian minister has indicated for his part about the gap between the industry that produces weapons and the purchase made by the authorities. Thus he has linked coordination in this field to the ability of the Ukrainians to expel Russian troops from their territory and restore peace in the Euro-Atlantic area.

For Kuleba, the production capacity of the Defense industry "is there" and to send weapons to Ukraine "is also there", insisting that now it is time to improve coordination at all steps of the production chain.

On whether the NATO and EU allies are meeting Kiev's military needs to combat the Russian Army, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister has pointed out that "not enough has been done" because otherwise Ukraine would have already won the war. "As long as this is not the case, it is not enough", he has blurted out.