More than two years after the war broke out in Ukraine, NATO has surrendered to the need to bet on long-term aid tools to avoid the impact that political ups and downs can have on member countries. In particular, the fear of a return of Donald Trump to the White House. Foreign ministers yesterday gave their first approval to a plan for the Alliance to better coordinate with Kyiv, train its soldiers and launch a $100 billion fund.
With the conflict at a very difficult point for Ukrainians, aid from the US Congress paralyzed and fears of Trump’s return, NATO is aiming to shield support for Kyiv. Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general, assured that “all allies agreed to advance a plan for NATO to play a greater role in coordinating security assistance and training” for Ukraine.
The plan includes creating a $100 billion fund for Ukraine over five years, several ministers confirmed during yesterday’s meeting. With this, it would be avoided that Kyiv was constantly waiting for vetoes and political strategies. However, Stoltenberg avoided giving details, but confirmed that the plans have been discussed with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Defense Minister Dmytro Kuleba.
It is, Stoltenberg explained, to give Ukraine more security and confidence in the aid, and although Stoltenberg refused to link it to a change in the presidency of the United States, the truth is that Trump has made it clear that he will block any future aid to Kyiv in case of winning the presidential elections.
Currently, the coordination of military support to Ukraine is centralized by the United States, and forty countries participate, including the 32 members of NATO. They do this through the so-called “Rammstein Format”, a forum in which Ukraine expresses its needs for armaments and supplies.
The meeting did not discuss how this fund would be provided. The Belgian minister Hadja Lahbib stated that the aid to Ukraine “is not about charity”, but about “security” for the entire Alliance. However, he warned that “it is dangerous to make promises that we cannot keep”. It wouldn’t be the first time it happened. European countries pledged to send one million rounds of ammunition to Ukraine. They failed, although the Czech Republic is now leading a plan to achieve it.
The Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, did not reject the proposal and considered it positive that there is more “predictability” for Ukraine, but warned that “duplications” should not be created with the efforts already made the European Union. “What can be done better together in the EU should not be duplicated from NATO. They are different organizations, with different purposes, but this reflection needs to be done”, he pointed out.
Latvia and Poland, two countries very close to Kyiv, and Canada supported the plan. The Latvian minister, Krisjanis Karins, advanced that one of the possibilities for providing the fund is for each country to provide a proportional part of its GDP (Riga contributes the equivalent of 0.25% of this indicator). Estonia calculates that if each ally did the same, Ukraine could count on 120,000 million euros annually. Money that, according to his calculations, would be “enough for Ukraine to win the war”.
Stoltenberg is confident that the new plans that have now begun to be discussed can be approved in time for the Alliance summit in Washington in July.
