Prime Minister Mark Rutte sees only a modest role for EU security guarantees for Ukraine. NATO and individual NATO countries are leading the way in this, he believes.

European Union leaders will speak at their summit in Brussels on Thursday about ensuring Ukraine’s security as long as the country is not a member of NATO and/or the European Union. But the “European line is an add-on” to insurance that NATO countries want to offer, Rutte said upon arriving in the Belgian capital.

According to the prime minister, it is far from clear what guarantees the EU can and is willing to offer. For example, whether the union wants to pledge supplies of weapons or less controversial goods, and how this will be arranged. “And of course it’s sensitive.” Austria, Malta and Ireland were traditionally neutral and would not send arms. And a country like Hungary, considered the member state most sympathetic to the Kremlin, has long opposed military aid to Ukraine.

Austria, Ireland, Malta and Cyprus had “obvious” objections, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer said on arrival. “It is clear to us as a neutral country that this cannot be done.”

The Netherlands, on the other hand, is “strongly in favor of this agreement” in principle and wants to “play a pioneering role whenever possible”, according to Rutte. He pointed out that the Netherlands already wanted to contribute to security guarantees for Ukraine with a number of allies ‘with F-16s, for example’. ‘Right now training’ Ukrainian pilots, but ‘surely hopefully’ also the delivery of fighter planes. “But that step has not yet been taken.”

NATO CEO Jens Stoltenberg and President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky were also invited via video link to a luncheon at the summit dedicated to Ukraine. Stoltenberg said earlier that Kyiv’s aspirations to join NATO would be discussed at the NATO summit in Vilnius next month. He refrained from commenting on the security guarantees of each NATO country.