And it’s Germany that’s now central to this European effort.
Cumulatively, since the beginning of the full-scale war in 2022, Germany has been the biggest individual country donor apart from the US.
According to the Kiel Institute’s Ukraine support tracker, it has given twice as much as Britain or France.
As people in Kyiv and Odesa are daily pounded by Putin’s ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones, it’s worth looking at the Kiel tracker’s figures for air defense systems.
Germany has so far donated 19 of them, including five of the vital US-built Patriot air defense batteries – two more than the US itself has given.
In the first year of this war, I argued that Germany “has a unique historical responsibility to help defend a free and sovereign Ukraine”.
At that time, I felt strongly that Germany was not yet doing what it should.
Now, in the fifth year of a conflict that has already lasted longer than the first world war and shows no sign of ending, I can say without hesitation that it is.
This is not just a matter of the numerical scale of its support for Ukraine and its own increased defense spending, which, on the latest projections from the German finance ministry, will reach €154bn (£130bn) in 2028 (Roughly the same as Russia’s total estimated military expenditure for this year).
