Ukrainian Defense Minister Yevhen Khmara in his first official presentation to his European counterparts said his country needs $27 billion in support to defend itself from Russia, most of all for air defense weapons to protect his country’s civilian homes and businesses from mass Russian aerial attacks, a ministry statement made public on Tuesday said.
Khmara debuts at EU Defense Ministers informal summit
European defense ministry bosses and other top officials assembled in Druids Glen, County Wicklow, Ireland on Monday at an “informal gathering” listened to Khmara’s video presentation sympathetically and several later spoke in support – but there were no immediate declarations of new assistance to Ukraine.
A senior commando officer credited for running some of Ukraine’s most effective special operations missions behind Russian lines, Khmara has served as his country’s defense minister since July and met with a few of his Western counterparts bilaterally, but until Tuesday had never addressed the European national security leadership as a single audience.
Khmara told the gathering attended by among others NATO Deputy Secretary General Radmila Shekerinska and European Parliament defense committee chair Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermannthat Ukraine needs around $27 billion in additional defense funding and asked his audience to accelerate a $104 million equivalent EU military assistance loan that has been approved but not yet fully disbursed.
Ukraine is calling on Europe’s defense ministry heads to bring forward money earmarked in that loan for 2027 and transfer it to Ukraine immediately, Khmara said, because of intense Russian air attacks and dangerously low stocks of Ukrainian air defense weapons, particularly heavy Patriot interceptor missiles needed to stop Russian ballistic missiles, and light, hand-held anti-aircraft missiles needed to take on cheap Russian jet-powered kamikaze drones.
Ukraine also must deepen its stocks of air-to-air missiles fired by aircraft and reserves of modern fighter planes to carry the missiles in preparation for a mass Russian aerial bombardment campaign that is likely to begin in early winter, he said.
Mutual benefits of EU cooperation with Ukraine in wartime tech developments
Khmara said that defense cooperation between Ukraine and Europe is mutually beneficial and that his country is ready to transfer its top wartime-developed defense technologies to allies.
Thanks to years of actual combat experience against Russia, Ukraine’s drone, battle sensor, and war data fusion systems are often years ahead technologically, and usually orders of magnitude cheaper, than competing NATO-standard systems, Ukrainian military analysts agree.
“Every euro invested in Ukrainian defense is an investment in European security,” Khmara said.
Kaja Kallas, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, following the meeting, told reporters in Ireland that Russia is attacking Ukraine using “terror by design,” and that the Kremlin’s attempts to prevent European support to Ukraine would not work.
“They will not succeed. To the contrary, today, also in the discussions that we had, we will increase our support to Ukraine,” Kallas said. “Especially for Patriot missiles [in European army stocks] about to expire should be sent or sold to Ukraine.”
Helen McEntee, Ireland’s Minister for Defense and Foreign Affairs, said that most EU governments support Khmara’s request to accelerate the Ukraine loan. Ukraine has a hole in its air defenses and Europe needs to help fill it, she said.
“What I think was very clear from our presentation from the defense minister [Khmara] is that there is a gap,” McEntee said. “I do believe that there was a significant number of member states that supported that ask.”
Because the meeting was informal, no formal decision could be made, she added in comments to Irish reporters. Approving Ukraine’s loan advance request would require unanimous agreement by the member states and the European Commission, McEntee said.
European reporting on the EU Defense Ministers informal summit
According to European defense sector reports, behind the scenes, Kyiv and its closest supporters are pushing Greece and Spain to turn over their in-stock Patriot systems and interceptor missiles to Ukraine.
In both Athens and Madrid, there is some resistance to the idea because of limited stocks and potential threat of air attacks on the homeland, in Greece’s case by neighboring Turkey, and in Spain’s case by insurgents or terrorists based in North Africa.
The major European information platform Euronews filed reports on the meeting directly highlighting Khmara’s appeal for Ukrainian drone financing, Patriot interceptors and additional European funding.
The Irish Times reported McEntee’s assessment that the issue of Ukrainian air defense was no longer simply a Ukrainian security issue, because the Russian military aggression is, potentially, a threat to the entire continent.
Germany’s center-left government led by Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Tuesday charged Russia with “state-sponsored terrorism” for an Aug. 4 drone attack that attempted, unsuccessfully, to blow up a Ukrainian heavy cargo plane on the tarmac of Leipzig airport.
Kremlin officials have scoffed at the idea Russia had anything to do with it and accused Merz and his supporters of warmongering.
Germany politically split between center-left Ukrainian supporters and far-right nationalist detractors
Since coming to power in 2025, under Merz’s leadership, Germany became Ukraine’s single most generous supporting state, having contributed $10 billion of aid of all types that year. The next-most supportive, Britain, handed over slightly less than $6 billion.
Germany has local elections scheduled in September in the eastern Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern states, both regions dominated by Germany’s far-right, single most popular political party, the nationalist-right AfD (Alternativ fur Deutschland).
On Tuesday evening, during a Sat 1 Newstime Sommerinterview broadcast, the co-leader of the AfD, Tino Chrupalla, said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “gives him more stomach aches” than Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
Chrupalla went on to call Zelensky “a highly corrupt president” who wants to keep the war with Russia going so that he and members of his inner circle could make more money from Europe-financed defense contracting.
Chrupalla argued that Germany “should return to dialogue with Moscow” and dismissed Russia’s having invaded Ukraine as no worse than “illegal” wars launched by US and Israel.