We are ready to enhance our support for Ukraine. We are committed to its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russia’s war of aggression.
We share the goal to keep supporting Ukraine until a just, comprehensive and lasting peace is reached. A peace that guarantees the interest of Ukraine and our own.
We are looking forward to discussing the way ahead together with our American allies. Our shared objectives should be to put Ukraine in a position of strength. Ukraine and Europe must be part of any negotiations. Ukraine should be provided with strong security guarantees. A just and lasting peace in Ukraine is a necessary condition for a strong transatlantic security.
We recall that the security of the European continent is our common responsibility. We are therefore working together to strengthen our collective defense capabilities.
I think of you look at Poland especially, they aren't messing around. The UK and France have kept their militaries somewhat up to snuff. Sweden, Finland, the Baltics, lots of other countries are pulling their weight. Germany defence spending is up as well.
Germany's problem is their procurement is so slow. Europe's problem is they've lost a lot of defence production capacity,and don't have a lot of surplus taking up space on the shelves. Europe's even bigger problem is that there are Russian friendly politicians on the inside.
What's inexcusable to me is that Ukraine is still short of artillery shells. It's three years in, it's been long enough to spin up a crash production line, but did I mention procurement is slow? The US has ramped up artillery shell production, but it's still not enough and Trump will probably ramp that back down.
Europe needs to get the lead out. Maybe there needs to be a Visegrad style group of Hawks, countries with decent military capacity that want to coordinate production.
NATO and the EU have been profoundly beneficial, but in times of crisis like this, the need for consensus can really slow things down. A Visegrad style "Hawks" group of EU+NATO countries might allow the more capable countries to cooperate in filling the power vacuum the US is likely to leave on the world stage.