By Tom Ozimek
Contributing Writer
European Union Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius has urged European governments to ramp up weapons production, open military stockpiles to Ukraine, and adopt a “peace through strength” approach to deter Russia, echoing a phrase heavily used by U.S. President Donald Trump in his push to revive America’s military might.
In an interview with the Financial Times published on Wednesday, Kubilius said Europe must move away from the production of sophisticated, boutique weapons that are difficult and expensive to mass produce and instead shift to cheaper systems that can be made quickly and at scale.
“Europeans produce what they call ‘haute couture’ production,” he said. “Technologically very sophisticated, very advanced, very expensive, and impossible to ramp up.”
Kubilius, who leads the effort to bolster the EU’s defense industrial base, said Europe must learn from Ukraine’s wartime experience of scaling up domestic production of weapons that may be less fancy—but are “good enough” to allow Kyiv to stay in the fight against Moscow’s formidable forces.
“The Ukrainians started to produce their own cruise missile, Flamingo, and this year they are ready to produce around 700,” said Kubilius, a former prime minister of Lithuania, which borders on Russia and is facing pressure from incursions of drones of unclear origin.
By comparison, he said, Russia produces around 1,200 missiles, while the EU manages a mere 300.
‘Peace Through Strength’
Citing a phrase popularized by President Ronald Reagan and often used by Trump in his effort to bolster U.S. deterrence and rebuild America’s defense industrial base, Kubilius told the Financial Times that the only path to peace is by building up a sufficiently strong defense posture to discourage any potential adversaries from daring to attack.
“The only formula which can bring peace is so-called peace through strength,” Kubilius said.
Since the 2022 invasion, Ukraine has built up a stock of domestically produced long-range weapons. These have allowed Kyiv to step up its attacks deeper inside Russia in recent months.
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry announced in late April that, since Moscow launched its invasion, Ukraine has increased the range of its strikes against Russia by 170%.
Posting footage on social media of what he said was an attack on a target in Russia at a distance of more than 930 miles away, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said at the time that the strike was proof of “a new stage in the use of Ukrainian weapons to limit the potential of Russia’s war.”
Expanding on the “peace through strength” notion that he cited, Kubilius said in the Financial Times interview that “strength should be on the Ukrainian side,” while calling on European governments not only to expand weapons production, but also to open their stockpiles to Ukraine.
Kubilius said that strengthening Kyiv’s military would give Europe greater leverage if it reopens formal negotiating channels with Russia.
Europe Weighs Future Russia Talks
Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to negotiate with “everyone,” including the Europeans, the Kremlin said in early May after the Financial Times reported that EU leaders were getting ready for potential talks.
European Council President Antonio Costa told the outlet that he believed there was potential for the EU to negotiate with Putin and that the bloc had Zelenskyy’s support in pursuing such talks.
“Putin is ready to negotiate with everyone. He has repeatedly stated this,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about the Financial Times report by Reuters.
“We will be ready to move forward with our dialogue as far as the Europeans are ready to do so. However, as Putin has repeatedly stated, we will not initiate such contacts after the position taken by the Europeans.”
Peskov said the onus was on European leaders to make the first move, because they were the ones who broke off relations with Russia in 2022 after the start of the Ukraine war.
“The Russian side was not the initiator of the complete cessation of our relations with the EU,” Peskov said. “This was initiated by Brussels and individual European capitals.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said recently that the United States had halted its efforts to broker an end to the Russia-Ukraine war after discussions did not prove “fruitful.”
“There are no such talks occurring at this time,” Rubio told reporters at a May 22 meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Sweden.
While Rubio said the United States is ready to get involved again if the opportunity arises, he encouraged other countries to step up.
“If someone else would like to handle it, they should,” Rubio said, adding that “the war can only end with a negotiated settlement.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
