NATO allies agreed to grant military aid to Ukraine in the amount of 40 billion euros, two Western European diplomats told Reuters a week before the summit of the leaders of the alliance countries in Washington, BTA reports.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg proposed that the allies commit to a multi-year commitment to provide military aid to Kiev at the same level as in 2022, when Russia's full-scale invasion began, amounting to around 40 billion euros annually.
Although member states did not back Stoltenberg's initial request for a multi-year commitment, the pact included a provision to reassess the allied contribution during future NATO summits, one of the diplomats said.
The allies also agreed to produce two reports next year detailing which country supplies Ukraine with what to meet the alliance's burden-sharing requirements, the Reuters source said.
Member States “will aim to meet these needs with a proportionate contribution”, the agreement says.
The financial commitment is part of a wider package for Ukraine that NATO leaders must approve when they meet in Washington on July 9-11.
In June, the allies decided that NATO would begin playing a more significant role in coordinating arms deliveries to Ukraine, withdrawing that commitment from the US, in a bid to save the process as alliance-skeptic Donald Trump tries to win a second term as president.
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the US gathered like-minded countries at the Ramstein Air Base. in Germany, forming a group of countries now numbering 50 that meet regularly to match Kiev's arms needs with donor contributions.
The so-called “Rammstein“ will continue to exist as a US-led political forum, but NATO will take over the military operational level, coordinating arms supplies and training for Ukrainian troops.
The move is seen as a way to provide some "protection from Trump" by bringing coordination under the NATO umbrella, giving the alliance a more direct role in the war against Russia while not committing its own forces.
However, diplomats acknowledge that such a move could have limited effect, as the US is the dominant force in NATO and provides most of Ukraine's weapons.
So if Washington wants to cut Western aid to Kiev, it will still be able to do so.
However, ahead of the Washington summit, allies are still at odds over whether and how to strengthen NATO's wording on Ukraine's future membership in the alliance.
NATO's official position is that Ukraine will join one day, but not while the country is at war. "Ukraine's future is in NATO," its leaders declared at the summit in Vilnius last year.
Some allies want that wording strengthened, suggesting the summit declare that Ukraine's path to membership is "irreversible," according to diplomats.