Europe and Canada on track to buy €4.3bn of US weapons for Ukraine this year, Rutte says

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Wednesday appeared confident that Ukraine's allies will have committed $5 billion (€4.3 billion) by the end of the year to purchase US-made weapons to ensure continued flow of such equipment to Kyiv following Washington's freeze on military donations to the war-torn country.

According to Rutte, allies have now pledged billions in US military purchases under the Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) initiative, which sees NATO coordinate the purchase of equipment Ukraine needs from US stockpiles.

The programme was launched in July after the Trump administration announced it would drastically reduce its own deliveries of lethal and non-lethal equipment to Ukraine. More than 20 allies have already contributed.

Five allies announced new spending pledges this week including Canada (€171 million), the Netherlands (€214 million), as well as Norway, Poland and Germany which committed a combined €429 million.

Australia and New Zealand have also in recent days pledged to participate in the programme despite not being members of the alliance.

This latest round of commitments is "getting us on the track to the $5 billion for the full year", Rutte told reporters after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels.

He added that the list of participating allies seems poised to grow, and that now, five months after the programme was launched, "only a handful of nations" have not yet made commitments through PURL.

These include Italy and France, the latter of which prefers to donate European-made equipment.

But this is being met with growing frustration from some participating countries.

Arriving at the NATO meeting, Lithuania’s foreign minister Kęstutis Budrys said that "we have to share the burden".

"We cannot proceed like it is right now on the shoulders of Nordic, Baltic countries, Germany, Poland, some of the others," he added.

Ukraine is estimated to need at least €83 billion to fund its military needs over the coming two years. Europeans, who have so far been the largest donors of military and macro-financial support to Ukraine, are expected to shoulder the bulk of the burden.

Rutte said he expects PURL commitments to continue to reach a billion US dollars per month by the end of 2026.

"For next year, we need for the full year again a lot of money," he had also said earlier in the day. "At least 1 billion, maybe even a little bit more than 1 billion a month. It might be around $15 billion, maybe a little bit more for the whole year."