NATO chief Mark Rutte has asked allies to devote 0.25 percent of GDP to Ukraine as he seeks to ease growing tensions within the alliance over aid to Kyiv
But the proposal — which could unlock tens of billions of dollars in additional aid — is already running into stiff resistance from some major NATO members.
The alliance’s secretary-general raised the possibility at a closed-door meeting of NATO ambassadors late last month, said two alliance diplomats and a person familiar with the matter, who were granted anonymity to speak freely on the sensitive issue. He was speaking as part of preparations for the alliance’s upcoming July summit in Turkey.
“Rutte and many of us want to make sure the support for Ukraine is consistent and predictable,” said one of the NATO diplomats.
If allies approve the idea, annual flows to Ukraine would effectively triple to $143 billion, based on the alliance’s own estimate of combined NATO GDP. Last year, Ukraine received $45 billion in security aid from its allies — covering everything from buying weapons for its military to investments in Ukrainian defense companies and the NATO-led effort to buy U.S. weapons for Kyiv.
Rutte’s proposal came partly in response to frustration among some capitals that they are doing much more than others to help Kyiv, the diplomats said. The Nordic and Baltic countries, the Netherlands and Poland are paying a higher percentage of their GDP in military aid to Ukraine than many other allies, according to the Kiel Institute’s Ukraine Support Tracker.
Kiel, a German think tank, highlighted that Nordic countries give much more than their share, the big countries of Western Europe are about in line with their GDP, while Southern Europe “remains a small donor.”
“Those … states who are really contributing more are raising this every single time,” the EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Tuesday after a meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers in Brussels. “And if we look at the numbers, it’s clear that the burden is not equally shared.”
Late last year, Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard told POLITICO: “The fact that the Nordic countries, with less than 30 million people, we provide for one-third of the military support that the NATO countries — with almost 1 billion people — provide … is not sustainable.”
Rutte is keen to secure support for Ukraine while minimizing fissures within the alliance; aid to Ukraine has been in turmoil ever since Donald Trump halted almost all new military assistance, leaving European countries and other allies to shoulder the full burden of helping Kyiv.
“We are going into the Ankara summit, which will very much focus, of course, on Ukraine — keeping them as strong as possible,” Rutte told reporters in Montenegro on Tuesday.
A similar idea was first raised by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last year. “Ukraine is part of Europe’s security, and we want 0.25 percent of the GDP of a particular partner country to be allocated to our defense industry and domestic production,” he told reporters last June.
But Rutte’s proposal has drawn skepticism from some allies, including France and the U.K., said the diplomats, meaning it is unlikely to proceed in its current form. Any alliance-wide target would have to be agreed upon by all NATO members.
Neither France nor the U.K. responded to a POLITICO request for comment.
The idea of setting a percentage-of-GDP target is just one of several being worked on to deliver a concrete result for Ukraine at the July 7-8 summit, the two NATO diplomats said.
“In Ankara, allies need to show Ukraine that NATO backs it for the long term,” said a third NATO diplomat. “That means cash, weapons, and political commitment.”
In a further complication to aid calculations, some NATO allies, which also belong to the EU, want their contributions to the recently approved €90 billion loan to Ukraine — €60 billion of which will go for military spending — “to be taken into consideration” in any upcoming proposals asking them to raise more cash for Kyiv, said the second alliance diplomat.
The alliance’s foreign ministers are likely to discuss the issue when they meet next week in the southern Swedish city of Helsingborg, the two diplomats said. The gathering could offer an opportunity to gauge support for the different measures, they added.
A NATO official speaking on behalf of the organization told POLITICO: “We don’t disclose internal discussions,” but that “support for Ukraine remains a priority and NATO will continue to pursue that in the run-up to the summit and beyond.”
This article has been updated.
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