The aid will be three-pronged, with the biggest chunk being military aid of around 5.4 billion kroner in 2023…reports Asian Lite News
Denmark will set up a $1 billion fund for aid to Ukraine in 2023, the Danish government announced on Wednesday following agreement by almost all parties in parliament.
Western nations have pledged a steady flow of support to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion a year ago.
“The government has agreed to establish a fund for Ukraine with a total framework of around seven billion kroner ($1 billion) in 2023,” the finance ministry said in a statement, a project supported by 159 of 179 members of parliament.
Some development aid will be redirected to pay for the initiative, as well as an easing of financial policy.
The aid will be three-pronged, with the biggest chunk being military aid of around 5.4 billion kroner in 2023.
Civilian aid for humanitarian and long-term reconstruction efforts will receive around 1.2 billion kroner, while 400 million kroner will go to business initiatives.
“We can’t wait for the last shot to be fired,” Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told reporters.
In addition, the government will allocate funds in 2024-2027 to cover the cost of replacing the military aid given to Ukraine in 2022 and 2023, the government said.
Meanwhile, British and German fighter jets scrambled to intercept two Russian aircraft flying close to Estonia in a joint NATO mission on Tuesday – hours after a Russian plane downed a US drone over the Black Sea – amid fears of an escalation in the region, media reports said.
The RAF and German Typhoon jets were reacting to a Russian air-to-air refuelling aircraft after it failed to communicate with Estonian air traffic control in the Baltic Sea, and as it approached NATO airspace.
The Russian Il-78 Midas plane was intercepted as it was flying between St Petersburg and Kaliningrad. The NATO jets were later redirected to also intercept a Russian Russian Antonov 148 military transport aircraft that was also passing close to Estonian air space, the RAF said in a release on Wednesday.
It was the first joint NATO air policing scramble carried out by the two countries, and comes amid a period of heightened tension in the region due to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and his threats to Kyiv’s western allies.
Russia today warned it will “consider any action with US weaponry as openly hostile” after the incident involving the drone in international airspace on Tuesday, which also came as Danish investigators said they had found a “suspicious object” beneath the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, parts of which were mysteriously destroyed last year.
