Nordic and Baltic States Pledge $500 Million To Purchase US Weapons for Ukraine

A group of eight Baltic and Nordic NATO states announced on Thursday that they were pooling together funds to pledge $500 million to the NATO scheme that funds US arms shipments to Ukraine, known as the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List, or PURL initiative.

According to numbers released by Ukraine earlier this month, the new package funded by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Sweden brings the total in PURL funds pledged by NATO countries to about $3.3 billion. The initiative first began over the summer following a White House meeting between President Trump and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte.

The US started actually shipping weapons to Ukraine using the PURL funds in September. The US and NATO have not detailed the contents of each PURL package, but reports say it is primarily air defenses, including Patriot missile interceptors, missiles for the HIMARS rocket systems, and other types of munitions.

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