Britain has a record of consistently having hit the NATO minimum of spending 2% of GDP on defence. More than that, when there is a crisis—such as Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea or Iran’s attack on Israel—we are almost always the first country to commit its forces alongside America’s to deal with the threat.

The issue of transferring frozen Russian assets to Ukraine has been unresolved for several years. More than $300 billion in foreign jurisdictions were blocked after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The European Union is considering grabbing more than $200 billion in frozen Russian assets and using the war chest as a bargaining chip in the Ukraine war peace talks after being left out of the table by President Trump.

Europe should use money from frozen Russian assets for further military support of Ukraine and relax its fiscal rules to boost defence spending, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said on Monday. Czech defence spending must grow to 3% of gross domestic product in several years from around 2% in 2024,