EU leaders vow to continue backing Ukraine, but make no concrete pledge

By Lili Bayer and Charlotte Van Campenhout

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -European Union leaders said on Thursday that they will continue to support Ukraine, but they did not immediately endorse a call by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to approve a package of at least 5 billion euros for artillery purchases.

"We need funds for artillery shells and would really appreciate Europe's support with at least five billion euros ($5.42 billion) as soon as possible," Zelenskiy told the EU leaders meeting in Brussels via video link.

Arriving at the summit in Brussels, the bloc's foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas had also called on leaders to match words of support for Kyiv with deeds, as U.S. President Donald Trump pushes ahead with his efforts to end the war, including through a rapprochement with Russia.

"The stronger they are on the battlefield, the stronger they are behind the negotiation table," Kallas said of the Ukrainians.

In the statement all leaders approved at the meeting - apart from Hungary's Viktor Orban - they pledged to "continue to provide Ukraine with regular and predictable financial support." They also said member states should "urgently step up efforts to address Ukraine’s pressing military and defence needs."

But there was no concrete answer on Kallas' proposal to focus on what Zelenskiy says he needs most urgently, such as 2 million artillery shells at a cost of 5 billion euros.

Kallas had already scaled back a proposal to pledge up to 40 billion euros in military aid to Ukraine for the whole year, with each country contributing according to its economic size, after resistance from some countries, particularly in southern Europe.

Bolstering the EU's own defences also features on the summit agenda, reflecting deep fears that Moscow may attack an EU member in the coming years and doubts about the future of U.S. protection for Europe via the NATO defence alliance.

"We have to rearm ourselves because otherwise we will be the next victims of Russian aggression," Lithuania's President Gitanas Nauseda said.

He also reiterated his support to Kyiv, saying "Ukraine needs our military assistance, Ukraine needs long-range missiles and we are ready to provide it. We should increase the pressure on Russia."

But some southern European capitals have been more reticent reflecting a division between those geographically closer to Russia that have given more aid to Ukraine and those further away that have given less, as a share of their economies.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said he did not like the term "rearm", which the European Commission has used extensively in its push for more defence spending.

"It is important to take into account that the challenges that we face in the southern neighbourhood are a bit different to the ones that eastern flank face," he said.

DEFENCE SPENDING

EU leaders will also debate the Commission's defence proposals, which include a call for European countries to pool resources on joint military projects and buy more European arms.

As they arrived at the summit, some said they wanted the EU to go further in financing defence spending.

"This should not just be a question of loans, as is currently the case," Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said. "I think we also need to seriously discuss the possibility of a ... joint borrowing facility that will also offer grants to member states in order to make defence investment decisions".

Earlier in the day, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed a similar preference for "truly common European instruments that do not directly burden the debt of states."

Others, like Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof, said they would not block the defence spending plan but were still very much opposed to joint euro bonds.

($1 = 0.9223 euros)

(Additional reporting by Philip Blenkinsop, Julia Payne, Andrew Gray, Jan Strupczewski, Benoit Van Overstraeten, Thomas Escritt, Tiffany Vermeylen, Krisztina Than, Francesca Piscioneri; Writing by Ingrid Melander;Editing by Tomasz Janowski, Andrew Gray, Alexandra Hudson)