“Ministers agreed we need to agree on the funding options as a matter of urgency,” Kallas told reporters after the Foreign Affairs Council. “We need to work on the legislative proposals to work on all the risks and mitigate all the risks and share the burden regarding those risks, but we definitely need to move on.”
Ahead of the gathering, Swedish Defense Minister Pål Jonson called for more sanctions on Russia as well as the use of the Russian frozen assets to allow Ukraine to “negotiate from a position of strength.”
On the sidelines of the gathering, the Netherlands announced a €250 million contribution to the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List initiative for Ukraine — a NATO-backed scheme that has European allies paying for U.S. weapons to be sent to Ukraine. The money will be used to purchase U.S. air defense systems and ammunition for F-16 jet fighters.
Dutch Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans and his Ukrainian counterpart, Denys Shmyhal, signed a deal to co-produce drones in both countries.
The European Commission also said that 15 member countries out of the 19 that had requested money under the EU’s €150 billion SAFE loans-for-weapons scheme had included support for Ukraine in their plans, involving “billions, not millions.”
“We made a decision to contribute at least 0.25 percent of GDP for aid to Ukraine and are looking at SAFE to do even more,” Latvia’s Deputy Defense Minister Liene Gātere told reporters. “We’re calling on other European countries to step up and do the same.”
This article has been updated.