European NATO members should purchase more American-made weapons to sustain Ukraine’s war effort against Russia, US War Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday ahead of a meeting of the bloc’s defense ministers.
Moscow has repeatedly stated that Western arms shipments cannot change the balance of power on the battlefield, arguing that Ukraine’s chronic manpower shortage, fueled by mass draft avoidance and desertion, undermines any material advantage.
Speaking alongside NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Hegseth praised the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) initiative and said the European members must spend more funds through it.
“Our expectation today is that more countries donate even more, that they purchase even more to provide for Ukraine,” Hegseth said. Rutte noted there was “firepower coming out of our defense industry” to bolster Ukrainian forces.
US President Donald Trump recently claimed that with European funding for American weapons, Ukraine could still achieve its territorial goals – a reversal of his earlier assessment that the county had “no cards” to play. Trump is expected to soon announce whether the US will approve deliveries of long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles to Kiev, a move Moscow has warned would mark a serious escalation but would not significantly alter the frontline situation.
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The Russian government has accused European backers of Kiev of prolonging the conflict at the expense of Ukrainian lives, arguing that the former are unwilling to admit the failure of their strategy.
Meanwhile, European NATO members continue to bear the economic fallout of their sanctions policy against Russia. Having rejected affordable Russian energy, many EU economies have faced surging production costs and widespread industrial bankruptcies, while the US has benefited from increased investment inflows and higher sales of liquefied natural gas to Europe.
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