Athens, Greece – Days before a new United States-led peace proposal diverted his attention, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Athens, where the two leaders announced plans to cooperate “on the development and deployment of maritime unmanned systems”.
The following day, on November 17, he was in the French capital, Paris, announcing the co-production of Rafale multirole aircraft and interceptor drones, and the day after that, he was in the Spanish capital, Madrid, calling for co-production of precision-guided missiles.
Other co-production agreements have been signed with Denmark, Germany and the United Kingdom.
The current peace plan being proposed by the administration of US President Donald Trump, if anything, makes such weapons programmes even more urgent, say experts.
“None of the drafts that are currently circulating are going to be anything close to being enacted. So there is no peace plan,” said Keir Giles, a Eurasia expert with Chatham House, a London-based think tank.
“However, if … this is something we have to take seriously, then … this makes Ukraine’s situation incalculably worse,” he told Al Jazeera. “The whole point of the Russian proposals is to leave Ukraine defenceless against the next round of Russian attacks.
“Ukraine is even more reliant on whatever long-term agreements for bolstering its defence it can lock in as rapidly as possible,” Giles said.
Technology to give Ukraine ‘an edge’
As Ukraine weaves itself into the defence fabric of Europe, it is offering its combat experience and its battlefields as testing grounds for new systems, particularly unmanned systems. In return, it seeks to light the forges of long-dormant production to match Russia in scale.
