Sweden announces more Ukraine military aid worth $1.6 billion

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) -Sweden announced a new military aid package to Ukraine worth 16 billion crowns ($1.59 billion) on Monday, the biggest package to date from the Nordic country, saying it wanted to help Kyiv strengthen its position in talks on ending the war.

The bulk of the package, nine billion crowns, will consist of new equipment that will be purchased in processes led by the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration, Defence Minister Pal Jonson told a press conference.

Around five billion crowns will be financial donations for Ukraine's defence industry.

"We are now at a critical stage of the war. Our focus is now on supporting Ukraine as much as possible so that they can get into a position of strength during these negotiations," he said.

Jonson said all European countries now need to increase their support to Ukraine. "More need to do more."

Since taking office in January, U.S. President Donald Trump has sought to broker a ceasefire to end fighting in the three-year-old war in Ukraine.

Jonson, asked at the press conference if Europe has the financial and production capacity to take on more of the responsibility if the United States scales down, said: "I'm slightly more concerned with the defence industrial production than the financial resources."

"The EU alone has an economy eight times as big as Russia, so if there is a will, there is a way for extensive support. The limitation has been the defence industrial production in Europe which has been adapted to peacetime," he said.

The government has said Sweden will ramp up aid to Ukraine this year, boosting the 2025 budget allocation to 40 billion crowns from 25 billion projected earlier, to aid Kyiv's fight against Russian invasion.

Including the new package, Sweden's military support since 2022 totals 80 billion crowns.

($1 = 10.0316 Swedish crowns)

(Reporting by Niklas Pollars and Anna Ringstrom, editing by Louise Rasmussen, William Maclean)