EU commissioner claims Russian defense industry massively outperforming bloc’s
Russia is outpacing the arms production of the entire EU after significantly ramping up its defense industry and despite Western sanctions, the bloc’s commissioner for defense and space, Andrius Kubilius, has said.
Kubilius, a noted Russia hawk and two-time prime minister of Lithuania, was approved by the European Parliament last month as the EU’s first ever defense commissioner.
In an interview on Friday with the RND media group, he called on the EU to significantly expand the production of conventional weapons such as artillery and infantry vehicles, as well as long-range and precision weapons amid what he called a Russian attack threat.
“The Russians have expanded their arms industry to an unimaginable extent despite our sanctions,” Kubilius stated.
Russia now produces “more weapons in three months than the entire European arms industry can produce, and in six months more weapons than the entire German army has,” he added.
Kubilius also cited experts who, according to him, say that Russia now produces more tanks than it uses on the front lines in the Ukraine conflict.
The commissioner said that a so-called NATO standard for weapons production should be developed in order to be prepared for a possible Russian attack on the EU by 2030. Kubilius claimed he was warned about such an attack by EU members' intelligence services, including Germany’s BND.
NATO has long declared Russia to be a direct threat, and Western officials have repeatedly claimed that if Moscow wins the Ukraine conflict, it could then attack other European countries.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly dismissed claims of any possible military advance by Moscow against NATO countries as “nonsense.”
Russia has also warned the West that continued arms deliveries to Ukraine will not swing the conflict in Kiev’s favor, but will only serve to prolong the bloodshed while increasing the risk of a cataclysmic clash between Moscow and NATO.
The US and its allies have sent over $200 billion worth of weapons, equipment, ammunition, and cash to prop up Ukraine in the conflict.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said on Thursday that European members of the US-led military bloc need to cut welfare and direct more of their GDP to the defense industry in the name of “safety.”
In an interview with Politico last week, Kubilius revealed that he would push for the EU’s next seven-year budget to allocate “not far away from” €100 billion ($105 billion) for defense. The current seven-year budget of over €1 trillion reportedly has allocated only €10 billion for defense.
Russia has boosted its defense industry amid the Ukraine conflict. Putin, however, has insisted that “every ruble” spent on the armed forces should be used effectively. Funding should not only provide for the needs of the military, but “fit in” with the national economy as well, he said earlier this year.
