At the NATO Defence Ministers' meeting held yesterday and today in Brussels, defence ministers discussed Ukraine’s victory plan with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, NATO's capability targets, and increasing defence spending.
“NATO's new capability targets demonstrate that due to 30 years of underfunding in defence across NATO member states, all Allies now need to allocate significantly more resources to ensure credible deterrence and defence. We must understand that increasing defence spending is not a race among allies to be the first, but a race to preserve peace. Therefore, at next year’s summit in The Hague, we need to agree on a new level of defence spending, which should be at least 2.5 or 3%,” said Defence Minister Pevkur.
Last night, in the NATO-Ukraine Council, defence ministers openly discussed the victory plan with President Zelensky. “Many elements of this plan were also outlined in the victory strategy Estonian Ministry of Defence published last year. Naturally, we support Ukraine and hope that this plan will collectively give us clearer targets in helping Ukraine achieve victory,” said Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur. “Estonia has contributed 0.25% of its GDP to Ukraine's defence and has delivered on its commitments. Additionally, we are leading the IT coalition with Luxembourg to support the development of the Ukrainian Armed Forces' and Ministry of Defence's ICT capabilities. This time, we were pleased to welcome Sweden as the 16th member to join the coalition in Brussels.”
The defence ministers also discussed strengthening NATO's integrated air and missile defence in response to the increasing violations of airspace by Russia. “NATO has taken steps to enhance air defence and improve situational awareness. The imminent reopening of our Ämari base and the presence of Spain's NASAMS unit in Estonia are part of this air defence enhancement, which will soon be reinforced by our own IRIS-T systems,” said Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur.
The first day of the meeting also included, for the first time in the defence ministers' format, a meeting with NATO’s Indo-Pacific partners (IP4 – Australia, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand) and representatives of the European Union. “It was a useful exchange of views on the security situation in the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions, as well as on Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and China’s covert support for Russia’s war machine – it is important that we maintain unity and determination in our dealings with China,” explained Defence Minister Pevkur.
As part of the defence ministers' meeting, the Baltic States hosting NATO battlegroups and their framework nations met, as did countries leading the Ramstein format capability coalitions in support of Ukraine.
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Photos: Kaitseministeerium | Flickr