Defense | EU says it must spend more to deal with Russian threat

(Brussels) The European Union must spend more on its security, not because of the election of Donald Trump, but because of the Russian threat, new European Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius said on Wednesday.

Many European countries are questioning the strength of the transatlantic bond and the persistence of American military support for Ukraine after the election of the American billionaire on Wednesday.

The latter threatened European allies with abandoning them if they did not spend more on their security and considered the amounts of his country’s aid to Ukraine too high.

Europeans have increased their military budgets since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but “we need to spend even more, and not because the president [élu] Trump asks us, but because of [Vladimir] Putin, of the threat posed by Putin,” he declared to MEPs in Brussels.

He also warned that, according to “recent intelligence reports,” Russia “could test the resolve of the EU or NATO before the end of the decade.”

This is why, he stressed, “we must urgently strengthen the EU’s preparedness for possible military aggression. This is how we can deter it,” added Mr. Kubilius.

“We do not want war, we want peace and therefore, we must be ready to defend ourselves,” he said.

The former Lithuanian Prime Minister, appointed this summer as Defense Commissioner, a position which did not exist until now in Brussels, must still be confirmed by the European parliamentarians before whom he was interviewed on Wednesday, before taking office, in principle in December.