Western leaders push Kyiv on arms
Want industry added in Ukraine
The chief of NATO and the defense ministers of Britain and France have paid surprise visits to Kyiv, Ukraine announced Thursday, in a show of continued solidarity, even as they emphasize the goal of pumping up weapons production within Ukraine.
Conscious of softening Western support for the expensive business of arming Ukraine, officials are billing expansion of Ukraine’s own arms industry as needed economic development for a war-tattered country.
It is also a potentially lucrative prospect for Western weapons makers, albeit a risky one in a country bombarded daily by Russia; Moscow’s forces launched dozens of exploding drones into Ukraine overnight, the Ukrainian government said Thursday, but there were no reports of casualties or serious damage.
“It will be an important opportunity for Ukrainian companies to forge new partnerships with the industry across the alliance and beyond,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said at a news conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday. “The stronger Ukraine becomes, the closer we come to ending Russia’s aggression.”
The visits came a day before a forum with international military contractors, convened by the Ukrainian government, which hopes they will join in developing the industrial capacity to build and repair weapons in Ukraine. Dmytro Kuleba, minister of foreign affairs, said the event would bring together representatives of 165 companies from 26 nations.
Western countries are having trouble meeting their arms commitments to Ukraine, notably for artillery ammunition, and are depleting their own stocks faster than they can be replenished. The US military has signed contracts for companies to build two new production lines for making artillery shells, and another for filling them with explosives.
After meeting with President Biden last week, Zelensky said he had sealed a “long-term agreement” with the United States for joint weapons production, but a White House statement was more circumspect, saying the Biden administration would host a conference in the coming months “to explore options for joint ventures and co-production.”
Zelensky’s penchant for ambitious pronouncements was on view again Thursday, when he said of his meeting with Stoltenberg, “Today, it is already a conversation between de facto allies and it is only a matter of time before Ukraine becomes a de jure member of the Alliance.”
How realistic that is remains unclear. Although NATO has stated that Ukrainian membership is a long-term goal, Western officials have said it is still a faroff prospect.
The British government revealed Thursday that Grant Shapps, its new defense secretary, had met a day earlier with Zelensky and new Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov to discuss military support, in particular bolstering Ukraine’s air defenses.
Zelensky also met Thursday with French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu, who made clear that development of Ukrainian weapons manufacturing was a commercial opportunity as well as a military goal, and told reporters that he had come accompanied by about 20 representatives of the French defense industry in fields as diverse as robots, drones, artillery, and artificial intelligence.