The European Union has given Ukraine permission to spend part of its defense loan on Chinese-made drone components, the Financial Times reported. The waiver covers the first money released under the loan, and it lays bare how far the EU still depends on Beijing for parts it cannot supply itself.
The carve-out
Kyiv requested and secured an exemption for the first defense tranche, worth €5.9 billion and set aside entirely for drones. It lets Ukraine buy certain Chinese components that the bloc does not make in sufficient quantity, two people familiar with the decision told the FT. That tranche is the opening slice of a wider support loan that reserves €60 billion for weapons purchases.
Rules built to keep the money inside the bloc
Under the loan’s terms, weapons bought with EU funds must come mainly from the single market, Ukraine, or approved partners such as Canada. Other countries can qualify by signing a security partnership with the union, contributing to the scheme, and backing Ukraine substantially. The UK joined on 13 July.
For suppliers outside those groups, foreign components may not exceed 35% of a contract, and purchases must not undercut the EU’s own security and defense interests. But the rules leave a door open. When eligible countries cannot deliver comparable goods fast enough, or in the volumes Ukraine needs, Kyiv can ask Brussels to let it buy elsewhere. That is the door Ukraine walked through for its drone money.
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China supplies both sides
The waiver throws light on Beijing’s role at both ends of the war. Brussels has branded China “the key enabler of Russia’s war” as a major supplier to Moscow’s military-industrial complex, even as it concedes that Ukraine’s own arms makers lean on Chinese parts too.
Ukraine has built one of the continent’s most inventive defense sectors under bombardment, outrunning the continent’s established arms makers in several fields. Even so, its appetite for drones outpaces what Kyiv and its allies can produce of certain components. Ukrainian officials put drones at roughly 80% of Russian battlefield casualties.
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