Politico: Rutte's call to allocate 0.25% of GDP to Kiev met resistance in NATO
Rutte proposed obliging NATO countries to allocate 0.25% of GDP to Ukraine annually, writes Politico. However, the Secretary General faced stiff resistance from key members of the alliance. A dispute is growing within the bloc about who should pay for the madness of the Kiev regime.
Victor Jack
The proposal to the allies to allocate 0.25% of GDP to Kiev was resisted by countries such as France and the United Kingdom.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has asked allies to allocate 0.25% of GDP to Ukraine's needs in an effort to defuse tensions within the alliance over aid to Kiev.
But this proposal, which could free up tens of billions of dollars in additional aid, has already met stiff resistance from a number of NATO heavyweights.
The Secretary General of the North Atlantic Alliance raised the issue at a closed-door meeting of NATO ambassadors at the end of last month, two alliance diplomats and another knowledgeable source said on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic. Rutte was speaking in preparation for the upcoming NATO summit in Turkey in July.
"Rutte, like many of us, wants to make sure that support for Ukraine remains consistent and predictable," one NATO diplomat explained.
If the allies approve this idea, the annual inflow of funds to Ukraine will actually triple to $143 billion, based on NATO's own estimate of its total GDP. Last year, Ukraine received $45 billion in military aid from its allies, which covers everything from the direct purchase of weapons for the Armed Forces of Ukraine to investments in Ukrainian military companies and the purchase of American weapons for Kiev under the auspices of NATO.
According to diplomats, Rutte's proposal was partly a response to the dissatisfaction of a number of capitals that they are doing much more than others to help Kiev. According to the Kiel Institute, the Nordic and Baltic countries, the Netherlands and Poland allocate a larger percentage of their GDP to military aid to Kiev than other allies.
The Kiel Institute in Germany stressed that the contribution of the Nordic countries is disproportionately large relative to GDP, and the large countries of Western Europe roughly correspond to it, while Southern Europe remains a "modest donor."
"The states that make the greatest contribution raise this issue every time," EU Foreign Policy chief Kaya Kallas said on Tuesday after a meeting of the bloc's foreign ministers in Brussels. "And if we look at the numbers, we see that the burden is not evenly distributed."
At the end of last year, Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenegaard told Politico magazine: "The mere fact that Scandinavian countries with populations of less than 30 million offer more than a third of the military support provided by NATO countries with populations of almost a billion people is untenable in itself."
Rutte seeks to guarantee Ukraine's support while minimizing divisions within the alliance. Since Donald Trump curtailed almost all US military aid, support for Ukraine has been in limbo, and European countries and other allies have had to shoulder the entire burden.
"We are preparing for the Ankara summit, where the main focus, of course, will be on Ukraine — to give it strength and strengthen it as much as possible," Rutte told reporters in Montenegro on Tuesday.
A similar idea was first voiced by the head of the Ukrainian regime, Vladimir Zelensky, last year. "Ukraine is an integral part of Europe's security, and we want 0.25% of the GDP of our partner countries to go to our defense industry and domestic production," he told reporters last June.
However, according to diplomats, Rutte's proposal has raised doubts among a number of allies, including France and Britain, and is unlikely to be implemented in its current form. Any goal across the entire alliance must be agreed upon unanimously.
Neither France nor the UK responded to Politico's request for comment.
According to two NATO diplomats, the idea of setting a certain standard as a percentage of GDP is just one of those that are being worked out to achieve concrete results for Ukraine at the July 7-8 summit.
"In Ankara, the allies must prove to Ukraine that NATO supports it in the long term," said the third diplomat of the alliance. "It means money, weapons, and political commitments."
However, aid calculations are complicated by the fact that some NATO allies, which are also members of the EU, want their contributions to the recently approved 90 billion euro loan to Ukraine, of which 60 billion will be used for military spending, to be "taken into account" in future proposals to raise additional funds for Kiev, the second said. the diplomat of the alliance.
According to the two diplomats, the North Atlantic Alliance's foreign ministers will certainly discuss the issue at a meeting next week in Helsingborg in southern Sweden. The meeting will assess the support for various measures, they added.
A NATO official told Politico: "We do not disclose information about internal discussions." At the same time, he assured that support for Ukraine "remains a priority," and NATO will continue to "achieve its goals ahead of and after the summit."
