NATO countries should spend at least 0.25% of GDP on Ukraine aid – Estonia's defense minister

Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said this before the second day of a meeting of NATO defense ministers, according to an Ukrinform correspondent.

"It is important that we continue to support Ukraine. We said this many months ago that we should invest at least 0.25% of the entire combined GDP for Ukraine. This means that 99.75% will remain in the countries. But this 0.25% will allow Ukraine to continue fighting with Russia. The proposal that came from Stoltenberg [about EUR 100 billion for Ukraine] is less than this 0.25%. If we want Ukraine to win this war, we need to invest more in its defense and also send a signal that they will become NATO members. Because this is a part of deterrence measures," Pevkur said.

He noted that to overcome existing security gaps, Estonia and other Baltic countries had proposed developing new capabilities, including the "Allied Capability Delivery Commitment" (ACDC) initiative.

"We hope that this initiative will be reflected in the final documents of the Washington Summit. It is clear why we do this. Russia will not change. The Russian threat is growing. Russia currently invests about 9% of GDP in its own defense. If we compare this with our figure of 2% in NATO and 3.5% in the Baltic States and in Poland, we still need to invest more. These are the main topics we intend to discuss today in order to achieve success in Washington," Pevkur said.

Photo: novinky.cz