Europe is massively arming itself Ukraine is the world's largest arms importer

Since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression, Kiev has imported massive amounts of weapons - more than any other country in the world. According to the peace research institute Sipri, Europe is also massively arming itself. Also because of Donald Trump.

DPA

10.03.2025, 04:41

10.03.2025, 05:10

dpa

The Russian attack on Ukraine and the uncertainty surrounding US President Donald Trump's foreign policy course have prompted European countries to arm themselves considerably. Contrary to the global trend, European imports of heavy armaments such as fighter jets, tanks and submarines have increased by a whopping 155 percent over the past two five-year periods, according to a new report by the Stockholm-based peace research institute Sipri. In contrast, the global volume of such arms imports fell minimally by 0.6 percent.

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"The new arms transfer figures clearly reflect the rearmament taking place among states in Europe in response to the threat from Russia," explained Sipri program director Mathew George. The fact that the global volume remained relatively unchanged is due to the fact that some major arms importers, such as Saudi Arabia, India and China, recorded significant declines in imports for various reasons - despite the perceived high threat level in their regions.

The Sipri data refer to the volume of arms deliveries, not their financial value. As this volume can fluctuate greatly from year to year depending on the order situation and the peace researchers are interested in long-term trends in their reports, they compare five-year periods instead of individual years, i.e. this time the years 2020-2024 with 2015-2019.