The European Union will offer Ukraine 6.1 billion euros in additional aid to help the war-weary country buy military equipment, particularly Patriot interceptor missiles needed to shoot down Russia's destructive ballistic missiles.
The funding, announced on Friday, will come from the bloc's 90 billion euro support loan, which reserves 28.3 billion euros for military aid and 16.7 billion euros for budget support this year.
The "Made In Europe" credit requirement will be waived to purchase Patriot missiles, which are manufactured in the United States, and drones, which depend on Chinese components.
The new amount of 6.1 billion euros represents the final allocation within the 28.3 billion euros package. Payments are being made in gradual installments as Brussels checks and verifies the contracts that Kiev signs with private companies.
So far, 8.35 billion euros have been transferred in defense funds.
"Ukraine's military advantage depends on the rapid availability of critical products in the required quantities and within very short time frames," Andrius Kubilius, the European Commissioner for Defence, said at a press conference.
“Accelerating shipments to the EU through destocking, reprioritizing orders and increasing production remains essential.”
The news comes as allies rush to supply Ukraine with air defense systems, while Russia escalates its bombing campaign, including through jet drones, ahead of a winter that EU officials expect to be the harshest yet of the war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy estimates that his military will need about 300 Patriot missiles to get through the winter safely.
The lack of PAC-3 interceptors, manufactured by US defense giant Lockheed Martin, has severely limited Kiev's ability to effectively repel Russian ballistic missiles. Moscow has exploited this weakness to double down on deadly air strikes.
The war in the Middle East has exacerbated the strain on production chains, which were already strained from the start. A single PAC-3 interceptor has a production time of 24 months and a price tag of approximately $4 million (3.45 billion euros).
In an effort to speed things up, Brussels is seeking to convince member states that still have Patriot interceptors in their national stockpiles to donate them to Ukraine and replace them later with deliveries planned for 2027 – in other words, a swap.
"The Ukrainians, as we understand, will make every effort now to have as many interceptors as possible before winter," Kubilius said.
"NATO is also working very intensively on this," he added, referring to the alliance's PURL program, which mobilizes US-made weapons for Ukraine.
"I hope this can really be done in an effective way."
Kubilius spoke to the press after the first meeting of the EU-Ukraine Drone Alliance, which aims to combine the former's industrial scale with the latter's innovative capabilities to boost the joint production of unmanned aerial vehicles.
He said the meeting brought together 18 companies from the bloc and 9 from Ukraine.
