Dutch government won't be able to spend EUR 750 million earmarked for military assistance to Ukraine in 2024 due to the "tight global market for defense equipment," said the country's Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans.
In a letter to parliament, Brekelmans emphasized that the Netherlands has already exhausted the stocks of weapons that could be transferred directly from warehouses, and it is necessary to buy new ones. The problem is, there is money but no weapons available to purchase, Defense News reports.
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The Dutch defense ministry decided as follows: these €750 million will be added to the next year's budget for 2025 and will be used for military assistance to Ukraine, as planned.
The bottleneck that prevented the timely spending of these 750 million euros on aid to Ukraine arose because of the surge in demand for military equipment globally. Particularly, alongside supplying Ukraine, the West is also trying to acquire weapons for their own needs, and the long-neglected production capacity turned out insufficient to satisfy all of the demand at once.
Defense Express notes, in this situation, the solution might seem obvious: these leftover funds could be invested in the Ukrainian defense-industrial complex according to the "Danish model" so that Ukraine could produce the necessary weapons itself.
However, Brekelmans disagrees citing the Dutch defense procurement system where the payment is done upon factual delivery of equipment. He argues that the current capacity of the Ukrainian defense industry is still limited, and, say, even if they invested these €750 million right now, Ukrainian manufacturers would not make it in time and deliver products by the end of 2024.
In spite of this news, the Dutch defense minister noted that the Netherlands has successfully realized, in one way or another, 9.5 out of 10.4 billion euros allocated for Ukraine aid this year. The remaining €970 million will be directed toward financing the short-term defense needs of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
"Incidentally, a significant portion of this remaining budget will be used to purchase equipment directly from the Ukrainian defense industry," he said.
Earlier, Defense Express analyzed how the $180 billion invested in arms purchases over the past two years have affected Europe's defense capabilities and even covered russia's perspective on Western defense production and the conclusions the Kremlin draws watching the European rearmament.
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