- Ukraine can make weaponry “faster and cheaper” than elsewhere in Europe, Denmark’s prime minister said.
- “We have a problem, friends, if a country at war can produce faster than the rest of us,” Mette Frederiksen said at the Munich Security Conference.
- Europe’s defense spending has soared in recent years, but problems remain.
Denmark’s prime minister has said Ukraine is able to produce weaponry “faster and cheaper” than anywhere else in Europe despite being at war, something she said should alarm the West.
Speaking on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference, attended by Business Insider, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned that Europe must ramp up production efforts going forward, working with the US to do so.
“We have a problem, friends, if a country at war can produce faster than the rest of us,” she said. “I’m not saying we are at wartime, but we cannot say we are at peacetime anymore. So, we need to change our mindset.”
Frederiksen added that Europe needed “a sense of urgency” and must reduce legislation and bureaucracy to ensure Ukraine “will get what they need, but also to ensure that we are able to protect ourselves.”
AP Photo/Matthias Schrader
Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Ukraine has ramped up domestic arms production, producing increasing numbers of homemade products such as missiles, howitzers, and drones.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy previously said that 30% of the military equipment Ukraine used in 2024 was domestically made.
Denmark has spearheaded a major project to make more weaponry in Ukraine, giving Frederiksen a particular insight into Ukraine’s production efforts.
While Frederiksen did not point to specific figures, Ukraine’s defense industry has boomed, matching or even outpacing Europe in some areas.
The widespread use of drones on the battlefield has seen Ukraine become a leader in drone production, with Kyiv saying the country produced more than 1.5 million first-person-view drones in 2024.
Ukraine also said it made 2.5 million mortar and artillery shells from January to November 2024, while the EU said it would make around 2 million artillery shells in 2025.
Typhoon drone unit/National Guard of Ukraine
Europe has significantly increased defense spending and production in recent years, but some officials say much more needs to be done.
Dovilė Šakalienė, the Lithuanian defense minister, told Business Insider in Munich that “Europe needs to up our defense spending very fast and very significantly to be able to stand on equal footing with the United States.”
Germany’s defense minister, Boris Pistorius, also addressed the issue over the weekend, saying, “The critics are right that we have to do more and that we did too little in the years before, much too little.”
Mark Rutte, NATO’s Secretary General, has also frequently called on European members of the alliance to boost military spending.
Speaking in Munich, he said the US was “right” to think “we have to step up, we have to spend more.”
He added that both the US and Europe were “not producing nearly enough” and that Russia produces more ammunition in three months than NATO does in a year.
But Vice President JD Vance, also appearing in Munich, seemed unmoved by Europe’s pledges, and used his speech to attack what he called free speech violations in Europe. Vance said it was “great” that Europe was planning to boost defense spending but that he was more worried about the threat to Europe from “within” rather than Russia.
For his part, Trump has long called for Europe to spend more on defense, threatening to leave NATO if that did not happen and even suggesting before he was re-elected that he would allow Russia to attack NATO members that don’t spend enough on defense.
Some countries have already taken big steps toward boosting spending. In 2024, Poland led the alliance in defense spending as a percentage of GDP, with Warsaw investing more than 4% of its economic output in defense.
Lithuania and Estonia have also both pledged to increase their own defense spending to 5% of GDP, saying that while they agreed with Trump’s demands, they were not taking that step solely because of the president but because of Russia’s threat.
But the future of the US-Europe alliance appears at risk over more than just defense spending. Trump’s team in recent days suggested Europe could be sidelined in negotiations between Russia and the US on Ukraine and that it was “unrealistic” that Ukraine could get back all territory occupied by Russia.
Despite rising tensions, many leaders said in Munich that there were still opportunities to keep working with the US to combat Moscow.
Kristrún Mjöll Frostadóttir, the prime minister of Iceland, said that “it’s easy to become very negative” about the US-Europe relationship and called the situation “uncomfortable” as Ukraine’s sovereignty is at stake. But “that doesn’t mean relations with the US have to be bad,” she continued.
Šakalienė added that while Trump had “unique” and “unexpected” negotiating tactics, that wasn’t necessarily a negative thing as “playing by the rules does not work with Russia.”
As many other European officials said over the weekend, the US also needs Europe and its capabilities as an ally, she went on.
