NATO considering options to support Ukraine

Originally Published: 03 APR 24 15:44 GMT

By Kylie Atwood, CNN

(CNN) — NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is considering a range of options to shore up long-term support for Ukraine, including establishing a fund of $100 billion over five years from the alliance members, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

“It is future-proofing,” said one senior European diplomat familiar with the discussions, explaining that changes being considered will make it more challenging for individual NATO members to alter and disrupt ongoing support for Ukraine as swiftly.

While the fund would not be large enough to support Ukraine’s war effort against Russia indefinitely, it would give the country a base of support that NATO officials view as vital as they worry about Donald Trump securing a second term in November that could mean the US will be unwilling to provide any more support to Kyiv. 

Stoltenberg said on Tuesday that the alliance needs to commit to providing more support for Ukraine and rely less on voluntary contributions.

“We are transforming NATO’s comprehensive assistance package into a multi-year program of assistance,” he said at a press briefing ahead of a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels Wednesday where ministers, Stoltenberg said will discuss “how NATO could assume more responsibility for coordinating military equipment and training for Ukraine.”

“We must have an assured reliable and predictable security assistance to Ukraine,” he said, adding that NATO allies already provide 99% of all military support to Ukraine.

While Trump’s allies in congress have aggressively opposed continued support for Ukraine which has held up more Ukraine funding passing, the former president has not clearly stated what his Ukraine policy might be though he has clearly signaled his hostility to the US sending billions of dollars to Kyiv.

Some former Trump administration officials believe that he would not immediately pull back US support for Ukraine but say that he would want the conflict to come to a swift end, by sitting down with the players on both sides of the conflict. They acknowledge that the result might be that Ukraine would have to give up some of their territory that Russia is currently holding onto.

One of the other ideas under consideration includes NATO taking over the leadership of the Pentagon- led Ukraine Contact Defense Group, which is the central node coordinating the logistics of weapons deliveries into Ukraine, the sources said.

This move would mean that Trump winning the presidency would have less of an impact on the mechanics of getting necessary weapons support into the country from dozens of nations around the globe.

Politico was first to report on NATO considering taking these steps.

Another ongoing push is for NATO countries to independently establish their own commitments with Ukraine, explained one of the sources. This would mean that not all Ukraine support gets funneled through NATO – creating sources of funding that could not be disrupted by individual alliance members.

CNN’s Louis Mian and Eve Brennan contributed reporting.

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