Tiny NATO nation finds way to arm Ukraine

With few stockpiles, Luxembourg pitches in by deploying cash

LUXEMBOURG — Luxembourg’s military consists of fewer than 1,000 troops, one cargo plane, two helicopters shared with police forces and fewer than 200 trucks, ranging from Humvees to about 10 stateof-the-art Dingo combat reconnaissance vehicles.

There are no tanks, warplanes or Patriot air defense missiles to contribute to the Western push to arm Ukraine. The 102 antitank missiles and 20,000 rounds of machine gun ammunition Luxembourg has sent from its arsenal were as many weapons as it could afford to give without putting its own military readiness at risk.

So Luxembourg, a nation with a population of 640,000, decided to use its considerable wealth to try to buy weapons for Ukraine on the open market, and signed a multimillion-dollar deal last spring for 6,000 Soviet-era rockets. In the end, though, the government delivered only 600 and was left scrambling for ways to spend the money.

At a time when Western stocks of Soviet-era weapons and ammunition are running low, Luxembourg’s travails provide a window on the vexing problem of supplying Ukraine with the arms it needs to hold off Russia until the arrival of sophisticated Western rockets, missiles and tanks later this year.

Ukraine has been burning through ammunition at a prodigious rate since the start of the war, relying on allies to replace its stocks. But there are no weapons producers in Luxembourg, and the government had already given all it judged it could afford from its own limited arsenal.

But determined to make a greater contribution to the war effort, Luxembourg set up a two-man team of inhouse arms dealers soon after the Russian invasion. They set out to scour commercial weapons markets in Europe and the United States, and demonstrate their country’s commitment to defeating Russia.

“We are so small, and we have no large army, and therefore limited stock, and we wanted from the beginning to help Ukraine,” said Luxembourg’s defense minister, Francois Bausch, who doubles as the country’s transportation minister and deputy prime minister. “But we are flexible, and so we can go and buy on the market what they need and deliver it directly to them.”

He also drew a parallel to Luxembourg’s history as an invaded state during World War I and World War II. “We were occupied many times in the last century, so we have an enormous sensibility for what it means for what is now happening in Ukraine,” Bausch said.

He added: “We cannot let (Russian President Vladimir) Putin do what he intends.”

Most NATO states are donating from their own military stockpiles, in a fairly straightforward process, but some also are snapping up arms for sale on commercial markets.

But that is murkier business, particularly when buying Soviet-era weapons that otherwise are of little use to NATO, from sellers who may not want to be identified for fear of jeopardizing their business by angering Russia.

The men of Luxembourg’s new arms-buying unit knew little of this when they struck out across Europe. They soon discovered they could place an order for the Soviet-era rockets, BM-21 Grads, to be built at a manufacturing plant in the Czech

Republic — a natural fit, they thought, for Ukrainian troops already trained in their use. But as is common in the unpredictable world of weapons procurement, the deal soon went sideways.

Grappling with high demand for Grads after the war began, the Czech manufacturer ran out of parts. To make matters worse, most of the company’s suppliers were located in Russia or countries that refused to export equipment that could be used to help Ukraine. In the end, Luxembourg had to settle for 600 rockets, one-tenth its original goal.

Not all of the country’s deals have gone south. It has managed to deliver or contract for approximately $94 million in weapons and other military assistance for Ukraine from manufacturers in Britain, France, Poland and the Netherlands — about 16% of the country’s defense budget, Bausch said.

But it has been a struggle, and that is still a tiny amount compared to the billions of dollars in security assistance that NATO powers like Britain, Germany and the United States have given Ukraine since last February. Those three countries alone have pledged nearly $40 billion.

And Luxembourg, with a GDP above $130,000 per person — by far the highest in NATO — has contributed only $25 million to Ukraine in humanitarian aid and contributions to NATO and European Union programs that are supporting Ukraine, according to data provided by its government.

That has drawn rebukes from otherwise supportive allies, particularly against the backdrop of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

“The rapidly evolving security context compels us to find arguments for doing more, rather than reasons doing so would be difficult,” wrote the U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg, Thomas Barrett, in an op-ed last June.

But Luxembourg officials said it is more complicated than that. Even if the government decided to devote more money to supply Ukraine’s military, Bausch said, there are not enough people in his department to decide how to spend it quickly and without risk of it being misused.

And there remains the problem of finding weapons to buy, as the two in-house arms dealers — both military officers who have deployed to conflict zones — soon found out.

In an interview this month, in which they insisted on anonymity, the pair described painstaking, often frustrating negotiations with commercial brokers, cold calls to manufacturers and even Google searches to track down weapons.

Ammunition remains high on the list, but sometimes the hunt for it leads to a dead end. Sometimes prices have been inflated. In other cases, they said, other buyers — including other allied countries — snatched it up before they could close the deal.

And then there is the case of the BM-21 Grad rockets, which fell short because of manufacturing limits. All was not lost, however, as the Luxembourg arms dealers contracted with the same Czech manufacturer to buy ammunition of both NATO and Soviet-era calibers, to be delivered this spring. The manufacturer also sold them 12,500 RPG-7 antitank rockets, a version of a Soviet weapon; they were delivered to Ukraine in the first few months of the war.

The dealers said there is little room for negotiation on prices, given the high demand. And, if all goes smoothly, which is far from assured, it takes at least two weeks to vet the sale, draw up the contract and run it through the necessary approvals.