Europe is capable of sustaining Ukraine’s resistance against Russia, even if the United States were to decide to completely halt its military support to Kyiv, the senior military official in charge of coordinating Germany’s arms supplies told Reuters.
Major General Christian Freuding said NATO’s European members plus Canada had already exceeded the estimated $20 billion worth of U.S. military aid provided last year to Kyiv.
They accounted for around 60% of the total costs borne by the Western allies, he said.
“The war against Ukraine is raging on our continent, it is also being waged against the European security order. If the political will is there, then the means will also be there to largely compensate for the American support,” Freuding said in an interview.
I am personally supporting Ukrainians every week. I am also pro-rearmament in the EU.
That said, said by Germany, this should be read as “we are strongly reliant on heavy industries, but our cars in record low demand, so we really, really, really want to build a lot of weapons for Ukraine (and we will keep some for us, while we decide whether to agree or not on standards and common resource pooling with the rest of the EU)”
EU needs to take several other steps before going head-first into (over-)production of weapons at the levels being discussed here.
Germany sounds every other day like they forget there other 26 countries with them in the Union. And I could say the same about France, but under the military POV France is much more defendable.