NATO leaders have pledged to provide Ukraine with at least $43bn in military aid within the next year to bolster its defences against Russia and formally declared Kyiv on an “irreversible path” to membership in the Western military alliance.
The pledges, included in a final communique following a NATO summit in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, came as the alliance’s members also announced individual and joint steps to boost Ukraine’s and Europe’s security.
This includes the United States, Netherlands and Denmark announcing that the first NATO-provided F-16 fighter jets would be in the hands of Ukrainian military pilots by this summer.
The US also said it will be deploying longer-range missiles in Germany in 2026, a major step aimed at countering what the allies say is Russia’s growing threat to Europe.
The move will send Germany the most potent US weapons to be based on the European continent since the Cold War. It would have been banned under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty signed by the US and the Soviet Union in 1987, but that collapsed in 2019.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted on social media platform X his appreciation of NATO’s effort to strengthen his air force, saying the new fighter jets “bring just and lasting peace closer, demonstrating that terror must fail”.
