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(As delivered)

Mr. President, dear Donald, this is really big. This is really big.

You called me on Thursday that you had taken a decision. And the decision is that you want Ukraine what it needs to have to maintain to be able to defend itself against Russia, but you do want Europeans to pay for it. Which is totally logical, and this is building on the tremendous success of the NATO Summit, the 5% but also the decision to keep Ukraine strong and the decision to increase our defense industrial production.

So based on that, that was Europe stepping up. This is again, Europeans stepping up. So I've been in contact with many countries. I can tell you that at this moment Germany massively, but also Finland and Denmark and Sweden and Norway, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Canada: They all want to be part of this.

And this is only the first wave. There will be more.

So what we will do is work through the NATO systems to make sure that we know what Ukrainians need. So if we can make packages, of course, in a way, we discussed it this morning with Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon, in a way that, of course, the US will keep on its stockpiles necessary to defend this country, that's absolutely clear.

But it will mean that Ukraine can get its hands on really massive numbers of military equipment, both for air defense, but also missiles, ammunition, etc, etc. So if I was Vladimir Putin today, and are you speaking about what you were planning to do in 50 days, and this announcement, I would reconsider whether I should not take negotiations about Ukraine more seriously than I was doing at the moment, if I was Vladimir Putin. But when I'm Ukraine, I think this is really great news for them.

So I really want to thank you for that, and it means Europeans paying for it.

And again, I mentioned all these countries, we will deal with that. And exactly as you said, that might also mean that countries will move equipment fast into Ukraine and then the US later, backfilling it, because speed is of the essence here.

So really, thank you this is important.