NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is asking members of the military alliance to "commit to a multi-year financial pledge for Ukraine," he said in Prague on Friday.
"Since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, allies have provided approximately €40 billion worth of military support to Ukraine each year," Stoltenberg said. "We must maintain at least this level of support each year for as long as necessary."
NATO foreign ministers met in Prague on Thursday and Friday to discuss how they coordinate aid to Ukraine. The informal talks are intended to help prepare the ground for a summit of NATO countries' leaders due to be held in Washington in July.
In the spring, Stoltenberg outlined plan to transfer responsibility for coordinating aid from an informal, United States-led initiative to the formal structures of NATO itself. Tied to that plan was a proposal to supply €100 billion ($108 billion) over the next five years.
So far, NATO member states have been coordinating military aid not through NATO itself, but through the US-led Ukraine Contact Group. NATO's position is that it is not a party to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
"NATO plans to play a greater coordinating role in the provision of equipment and training," Stoltenberg said on Friday. "Practically all military aid to Ukraine - 99% - comes from NATO allies. So it makes sense that NATO should play a greater role in these efforts."
But the spring proposal has met resistance, in part because some allies prefer to continue supplying military aid outside of NATO. Another is that commitments made through NATO could be more strongly binding.
On Thursday, dpa reported that Stoltenberg is now asking the alliance's member states guarantee they will at least maintain their current level of support over the next few years.
He told reporters on Friday that long-term commitments are needed because "Russia must understand that it cannot wait us out."
"We have already spent roughly 40 billion per year so far. What I'm asking all us to do is to commit that for the following years," Stoltenberg said.
Foreign ministers also discussed the possibility of one day allowing Ukraine to join the alliance.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told reporters in Prague that at the Washington summit, "we'll be taking concrete steps to bring Ukraine closer to NATO and ensure that there's a bridge to membership, a bridge that's strong and well-lit."
Another on-going question is what conditions NATO countries should impose on how their weapons are used by Ukraine. Some, such as Italy, stipulate that their weapons must only be used against targets on Ukrainian territory. Others, such as Poland, impose no such restrictions.
On Thursday, the US decided to lift this restriction from its own weapons, allowing Ukraine to attack some targets on Russian territory. Germany followed suit on Friday.
The Kremlin has said there would be "consequences" if such strikes were to occur.
Friday also marked the end of a four-month NATO military exercise called Steadfast Defender 2024, the largest live exercise it has conducted for decades.
"More than 90,000 forces, more than 50 ships, more than 80 aircraft flying hundreds of sorties, and more than 1,100 combat vehicles from all 32 NATO Allies were involved in the exercise," a NATO press release said.
Steadfast Defender was a show of force as the alliance's European members move to rearm in the face of Russia's war against Ukraine, reversing the atrophying of military spending that followed the end of the Cold War.
The exercise “demonstrated the incredible strength of the trans-Atlantic bond between NATO allies in Europe and those in North America,” NATO's European commander, General Christopher G Cavoli, said in the press release.
“The highly complex military activities conducted over the course of this exercise have demonstrated that this alliance is capable and ready to conduct our core mission of collective defence,” Cavoli said.
