Australia and New Zealand join PURL

This was stated by the Secretary General of the Alliance, Mark Rutte, following the meeting of the Ukraine-NATO Council.

The burden sharing (of arms funding for Ukraine — ed.) is much better now than it was, say, 4 or 6 weeks ago. And the fact that now even New Zealand and Australia, who are not members of NATO but are close partners of the Alliance through the Indo-Pacific region, that they have now also made a commitment (to be part of PURL). This is really great news, and it gives us a steady flow of arms to Ukraine from the necessary US stockpiles.

Mark Rutte

NATO Secretary General

The Ukrainian Ambassador to Australia, Vasyl Miroshnychenko, later wrote on Facebook about the financial assistance from New Zealand.

His words suggest that New Zealand will contribute NZ$15 million ($8.7 million) to PURL, which was confirmed by the country's Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins.

It is also known that Australia will distribute the funds not only to PURL. The 95 million Australian dollars (or 63 million US dollars) include:

• 50 million Australian dollars for PURL;

• 2 million Australian dollars for the Drone Coalition;

• 43 million Australian dollars for military equipment, including tactical air defense radar stations, ammunition and combat engineering support.

Earlier, five countries allocated $1 billion for the purchase of weapons for Ukraine under the PURL program. Ukrainian defenders will, in particular, receive missiles for Patriot systems.