Dutch Defence Minister Ruben Brekelmans has given a grim assessment of the situation in the war zone in Ukraine during a debate on the defence budget in parliament, saying that Russia retains the upper hand and that the US elections are making the situation even more uncertain.

Source : European Pravda, citing Dutch newspaper Trouw

Quote : "We can even say that Ukraine is [currently] losing the war. And we're dealing with the [US] election results, which are turning everything upside down quite a bit because we know that the new president, Donald Trump, has made statements about how he feels about Ukraine and how he'll force the parties to the negotiating table."

Details : At the beginning of his speech, Brekelmans discussed further military assistance to Ukraine and stated that "Russia has the advantage" on the battlefield.

"The risk is that Ukraine will have to make big concessions because it'll negotiate from a position of weakness. This will mean that aggression in Europe will win. Then we'll really be living together on a different continent than the one we all grew up on," Brekelmans said.

The minister also noted that the previous Dutch government had determined the amount of aid to Ukraine for 2025, and the current government sees no reason to revise it.

"Even if I had a much bigger budget for Ukraine right now, it would not lead to immediate deliveries. There are simply no Patriot [air defence] missiles [in the warehouses available for delivery to Ukraine]," the defence minister explained.

Background :

• In recent weeks, after Trump's election as US president, the West has begun to discuss a certain version of the "settlement" of the Russo-Ukrainian war more actively.
• Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó stated that with Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election, the end of the Russian-Ukrainian war "has never seemed so close".

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