Military aid to Ukraine should be increased to EUR 100B this year - Estonia

Estonia calls on partners to expand defense assistance to Ukraine to EUR 100 billion in 2023.

That’s according to Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur, who spoke with journalists at the doorstep of the NATO defense ministerial in Brussels, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"We’ll try to help Ukraine with approximately 100 billion euros this year, all together. This should be our aim," Pevkur said.

He noted that Estonia had already provided Ukraine with nearly EUR 400 million worth of assistance, which is 1.1% of the country's GDP. If all countries participating in the Ukraine Defense Contact Group allocate 1% of their GDP to support Kyiv (in total, it stands at EUR 50 trillion), it will be a total of EUR 500 billion, noted the Estonian defense chief.

"So we are talking about even one-fifth of what Estonia has already done. So we try to push all the other countries to increase our help to Ukraine to at least EUR 100 billion this year," the Estonian Defense Minister emphasized, adding that the assistance is important because “Ukraine has to win this war.”

At the same time, he expressed hope that the European Union will move to joint purchases of ammunition. "We would like to see that we will buy together in the European Union at least 1 million rounds for Ukraine," said Pevkur.

As reported by Ukrinform, a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group (the so-called "Ramstein-9"), which includes 50 countries, is being held in Brussels on February 14.