Russia Ukraine war, page-2342

EU to provide weapons, including fighter planes, to Ukraine amid Russian invasion

The European Union announced Sunday it will send weapons, including fighter planes, to Ukraine as the Eastern European nation battles an all-out invasion from neighboring Russia. The 27-member European bloc had already closed its airspace to Russian planes and barred two Kremlin-controlled media outlets, but the plans to send weapons directly through Brussels is a first.

For the first time ever, the European Union will finance the purchase and delivery of weapons and other equipment to a country that is under attack."

EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell said the bloc would earmark $500 million for EU member states to buy arms for Ukraine."We're going to provide even fighting jets," Borrell said at a Sunday press conference. "We're not talking about just ammunition. We are providing more important arms to go to war."

The European Union (EU) is a unique economic and political union between 27 European countries.

The predecessor of the EU was created in the aftermath of the Second World War. The first steps were to foster economic cooperation: the idea being that countries that trade with one another become economically interdependent and so more likely to avoid conflict. The result was the European Economic Community, created in 1958 with the initial aim of increasing economic cooperation between six countries: Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

Since then, 22 more countries joined (and the United Kingdom left the EU in 2020) and a huge single market (also known as the ‘internal’ market) has been created and continues to develop towards its full potential.