BRUSSELS, March 18 Foreign Ministers of the European Union countries At a meeting in Brussels on Monday, they approved a decision to allocate five billion euros to the European Peace Fund to finance military assistance to Ukraine for 2024, according to a statement by the Council of the European Union.
“Today the Council of the EU decided to increase funding for the European Peace Fund by five billion euros and provide this funding for Ukraine through the creation of a special fund for assistance to Ukraine within the European Peace Fund,” the document states.
It also notes that funding from the fund will be used for both lethal and non-lethal assistance to Kyiv, as well as for training operations.
Earlier, the permanent representatives of the EU member states agreed in principle on the allocation of five billion euros to the European Peace Fund to provide military assistance to Ukraine in 2024.
The extra-budgetary European Peace Facility (EPF) was created by the EU in March 2021 to strengthen its capacity to prevent conflict and strengthen international security. The fund was calculated within the framework of about 5.7 billion euros for the period 2021-2027. However, most of the funds from this fund have already been reserved for partial compensation to EU member states for funds (in total, seven tranches of approximately 500 million euros each have been allocated by EU countries from the arms fund for Ukraine) spent on providing military assistance to Ukraine.
Russia believes that arms supplies to Ukraine interfere with the settlement, directly involve NATO countries in the conflict and are “playing with fire.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov noted that any cargo that contains weapons for Ukraine will become a legitimate target for Russia. According to him, the United States and NATO are directly involved in the conflict not only by supplying weapons, but also by training personnel in the UK, Germany, Italy and other countries. The Kremlin stated that pumping Ukraine up with weapons from the West does not contribute to negotiations and will have a negative effect.