By Kontur and AFP | 2024-04-03

BRUSSELS -- NATO foreign ministers on April 3 debated a proposal to create a €100 billion ($108 billion), five-year fund for Ukraine, as the alliance's chief urged them to guarantee long-term arms supplies for Kyiv's outgunned forces.

"Ukraine has urgent needs," NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said as the ministers met in Brussels. "Any delay in providing support has consequences on the battlefield as we speak. So we need to shift the dynamics of our support."

"We must ensure reliable and predictable security assistance to Ukraine for the long haul so that we rely less on the voluntary contributions and more on NATO commitments, less on short-term offers and more on multi-year pledges," he said.

The proposal was for NATO's 32 countries to contribute to the fund according to the size of their economy, said officials and diplomats.

Up until now NATO has sent only non-lethal aid to Ukraine, while its individual members have supplied weaponry worth tens of billions of dollars.

Strengthening regional air defenses

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte April 2 said the Netherlands would temporarily deploy Patriot missile systems to Lithuania, as the Baltic states seek NATO allies to rotate air defense capabilities to the region.

"Dutch armed forces are currently making preparations for a Patriot air defense unit to conduct an exercise in Lithuania this summer," Rutte told reporters in Vilnius, alongside Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda.

"Lithuania's borders are EU [European Union] and NATO borders, and that makes them our borders too... and we will defend them," he added.

Nauseda welcomed the decision. "This is an important step in the implementation of the rotational air defense model in the Baltic Sea region," he said.

Lithuania's Defense Ministry said earlier that the deployment would last several weeks.

NATO allies last year agreed on a plan to rotate ground-based air defense systems on a short-term basis to the eastern flank as part of efforts to deter Russia.

Lithuania hopes the Dutch deployment will lead other NATO members to do the same, leaving few to no gaps in air defense of the Baltic states.

"We must all remember that the Baltic Sea region and the entire eastern flank of NATO are the Alliance's front line of defense," Nauseda said.

A total of 250 Dutch troops are already part of the German-led NATO battlegroup based in Lithuania.

The country's fighter jets participate in the alliance's Baltic air policing mission.

Europe has entered 'prewar era'

Meanwhile, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk last week warned of the "real" threat of conflict in Europe, saying that for the first time since the end of World War II the continent has entered a "prewar era."

"War is no longer a concept from the past. It is real, and it started over two years ago," he said in an interview with the European media grouping LENA on March 29.

"The most worrying thing at the moment is that literally any scenario is possible. We haven't seen a situation like this since 1945."

"I know it sounds devastating, especially for the younger generation, but we have to get used to the fact that a new era has begun: the prewar era," he said. "I'm not exaggerating; it's becoming clearer every day."

Russia's invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago upended European leaders' sense of unshakable postwar peace, prompting many countries to gear up weapon production to supply both Kyiv and their own militaries.

Tusk, a former European Council president, whose country has been one of the staunchest supporters of neighboring Ukraine, said that if Kyiv lost the war "no one" in Europe would feel safe.