BRUSSELS, March 13. /TASS/. The West should collect at least 120 billion euros of military aid per year for Ukraine so that Kiev has the opportunity to win on the battlefield, for this, the EU and NATO countries should start taking targeted loans on the financial market, Kusti Salm, Permanent Secretary of the Estonian defense ministry, said.
This amount is just over 10% of the total military budget of all NATO countries for 2023.
"Allocating 120 bln euros a year to military aid to Ukraine is a ballpark figure for what should be enough for Ukraine to win the war," Salm said in an interview with the Brussels-based portal Euractiv.
He believes that with the money, by 2025, Ukraine will get to a point where they can impose attrition to Russia.
Salm suggested that part of that amount could be funded with Eurobonds, where the European Commission could raise funds from the financial markets and use the group of 27 EU member states as a guarantee.
However, he stressed that this money is provided only in the form of military assistance. Estonia did not include humanitarian, budgetary, technical assistance and even the costs of training personnel of the Ukrainian armed forces in this amount.
Salm claims that 120 billion euros is only 0.25% of the GDP of the Western states invested in the military aid. He did not specify how he calculated this.
According to official NATO estimates, the total military budget of all alliance countries in 2023 amounted to $1.3 trillion, that is, less than 1.2 trillion euros. The e amount of 120 billion euros is in reality just over 10% of NATO’s total military budget for last year.
Earlier EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that over the two years of the conflict, EU countries have provided Kiev with a total of 88 billion euros in aid, and this amount includes all expenses for Ukraine, including money in EU countries spent on Ukrainian refugees.