Europe Must Leverage the Ukraine Defense-Recovery Nexus

The latest edition of the Ukraine Recovery Conference (URC), held in Rome on July 10-11, was an unlikely success. The first URC of the highly volatile and turbulent Trump 2.0 era, the international gathering saw high-level political participation and attracted significant private-sector interest. Among other results, the European Commission announced a new European Flagship Fund for the Reconstruction of Ukraine.

On a political level, the conference left no doubt that Europe continues to stand firmly on Ukraine’s side even as the US position has swung in various directions in recent months. The presence in Rome of US Special Envoy for Ukraine General Keith Kellogg was an encouraging sign in this respect.

Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni deserves praise for showcasing Rome’s convening power against the backdrop of an international agenda filled with a plethora of regional crises. The conference put the spotlight on the long-term goal of Ukraine’s rehabilitation, going beyond the short-term necessity of tackling a conflict that, despite President Trump’s push for a negotiated outcome, has only intensified.

In fact, the conference’s follow-up should focus more sharply on the inextricable nexus between Ukraine defense and recovery, leveraging all possible synergies among priorities that are for now only loosely integrated: Ukraine defense, Ukraine recovery, European rearmament, and European security. 

The starting point is the clear recognition that, of all European countries at present, Ukraine obviously has the most urgent defense needs as battlefield realities deteriorate. At the same time, Ukraine boasts the most dynamic, fastest-growing, and only battle-tested defense sector on the European continent.

As Ukraine’s NATO membership is no longer on the table, much greater priority should be attached to buttressing Ukraine’s already impressive defense capabilities by strengthening its industrial base. This would ensure that Kyiv can continue fending off Russian aggression while Europeans discuss non-NATO external security guarantees. Bolstering Ukrainian defenses is also the sine qua non of any viable and ultimately successful recovery process.

Providing Kyiv with the weapons it sorely needs, from the US Patriot system to Germany’s Taurus missile systems, is imperative at this critical stage of the conflict. The other side of the equation, however—and the most transformative in the longer run—is for Europe to support a sweeping integration of Ukraine’s defense-industrial base into the European defense market.

As Europe embarks on its own large-scale rearmament process, a two-way street should be opened between defense modernization efforts across European economies and in Ukraine. On the one hand, European partners could absorb more of Ukraine’s defense needs (from ballistic missile production to drone development). On the other, Kyiv could offer the unparalleled know-how accumulated over years of warfighting in service of repurposing select European manufacturing segments toward defense-oriented goals.

Under the new leadership of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Germany could lead the way in articulating concrete initiatives in this direction, linking its own ambitious rearmament with Ukraine’s. Among other initiatives, it could creatively explore future security-related contributions from currently stagnating European industries such as the automotive sector.

Other capable European economies should join what could become a Europe-wide effort to build a European-Ukrainian defense production community of sorts. In fact, as the concomitance between the URC in Rome and the Coalition of the Willing videocall around the same days showed, there is a need to better connect the two processes. Not only do the two formats have significant membership overlap, but their respective roadmaps and objectives could be streamlined.

France and the United Kingdom, which have been leading the Coalition of the Willing, should look into extending their recently announced “entente industrielle” to Ukraine and placing the defense-recovery nexus at the center of the coalition’s still vaguely defined agenda. And as the host of next year’s URC and one of Europe’s new defense heavyweights, Poland could take up the challenge of charting the course in the months ahead. The goal is to devise concrete plans for turning the European security-Ukrainian security equation into a consequential policy formula for shared success. 

* The author thanks Tyson Barker, former deputy special representative for Ukraine recovery at the US Department of State, for his input.