NATO member countries intend to include new expenses for military support of Ukraine in the category of “defense expenses” within the framework of the initiative to increase target defense indicators to 5% of GDP. About this informs Euractiv.
These costs can include both the procurement of weapons specifically for Ukraine and investments in the Ukrainian defense industry. The final decision on this matter is still under discussion, and the final wording may change ahead of the NATO summit on June 24-25 in The Hague.
The summit is expected to make a principled decision to increase defense spending from the current 2% of GDP. The new initiative envisages allocating at least 5% of GDP to defense, of which 3.5% should go to key defense areas, and another 1.5% to a wider range of expenditures that are also recognized as defense.
Currently, consultations are ongoing among NATO countries on the specific filling of this 1.5%, which, in particular, may include spending on cyber security, infrastructure development, increasing resilience, as well as military aid to Ukraine.
An agreement was formed in the Alliance to take into account only new costs for military support of Ukraine. In return, non-military aid will not be included in the accounting of defense spending. The inclusion of such costs is logical, since supporting Ukraine with weapons directly strengthens the security of NATO itself.
