NATO will help buy 1,000 US-built Patriot missiles to equip European member states and allow them to hand more of their existing weaponry to Ukraine, the alliance said yesterday.

Its Support & Procurement Agency will give support to Germany, the Netherlands, Romania and Spain to buy the missiles, with the cost of the contract estimated at $5.5 billion (£4.3bn).

Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said that “Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian civilians, cities and towns show how important modern air defences are. Scaling up ammunition production is key for Ukraine’s security and for ours.”

Nato’s military committee chairman, Admiral Rob Bauer of the Netherlands, warned in October that member states were running out of ammunition to supply Ukraine in what has become a protracted war of attrition against Russia along a 620-mile front line in the country’s east. 

Many Western states, over decades of neoliberalism, have outsourced manufacturing to the global South, weakening their ability to rapidly ramp up war production as Russia has. The need to prioritise building up its own military was cited by Poland in September as a reason it would stop supplying weapons to Ukraine, while the continued supply of funds for Kiev’s war effort has been held up for internal political reasons in both the European Union and United States.

Ukraine resumed shelling of the Russian border town of Belgorod yesterday, following a heavy bombardment last Saturday that killed 25 people, including five children. But the Russian Defence Ministry said it had shot down all Ukrainian missiles.