Europe entering "new cold war" with Russia - Finland's defense chief

European leaders are increasingly concerned that the war in Ukraine has reached a stalemate and that allies are lagging behind Russia in arms production.

This is reported by Politico, Ukrinform reports.

“Russia has the capability and the ability to go on with this war for years,” Finnish Defense Minister Antti Häkkänen said during a visit to Washington this week where he signed a new defense agreement with the U.S.

According to Hekkänen, part of the problem with increasing defense production in the West was the slow recognition that a full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia had forever changed the political landscape of Europe.

Hekkänen added: "I think many Western countries were thinking that this was a short-term” problem. But now I think that in the U.S. and in NATO countries, almost everyone knows that this is the end of the last 30 years” since the Soviet Union fell. “Now we’re going into some kind of a new cold war.”

His government announced this month that it was doubling domestic ammunition production, in part to send much of it to Ukraine. In addition to about $25 million in seed capital from the government and multi-year contracts that guarantee continued operations for years to come, the project is also being funded by new investment from NAMMO, a Norwegian defense company with a large presence in Finland. Production growth will reach its peak by 2027. Public and private investment and long-term procurement contracts between 2024 and 2030 will total $1.3 billion.

Although the battlefield is frozen, in the long term "Ukraine has a good chance to win" because Western countries "have bigger economic muscles and can ramp up their defense industry to the kind of levels that Russia can’t compete with."

"We can do it, and Ukraine can, but it needs decisive steps from Western countries," added Hekkianen.

Some European countries, such as Germany, have recently increased military aid to Ukraine, and several British and German defense firms have signed small joint production deals with Ukrainian companies to repair armored vehicles and build new artillery systems inside Ukraine. These first steps towards rebuilding the Ukrainian defense industry are an acknowledgment that the war will continue.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, citing the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Putin's inability to achieve his maximalist goals in Ukraine is not currently a permanent factor, and only the continued support for Ukraine on the part of its Western partners can ensure that these goals remain unattainable.