Netherlands to invest $436 million to make armored vehicles for Ukraine

The Netherlands will invest 400 million euros ($436 million) into a Swedish fund to produce infantry fighting vehicles for Ukraine, Dutch media reported on June 7.

According to De Telegraaf the announcement is part of a wider action plan aimed at scaling up the country's defense industry.

The report did not specify the type of infantry fighting vehicle, but Ukraine and Sweden last year signed an agreement to start jointly producing the CV90, considered one of the best of its type in the world.

Sweden has previously given Ukraine a variety of advanced military equipment, including the CV90 and the Archer self-propelled howitzer.

Its latest package for Ukraine – the country's largest tranche of military assistance since the beginning of the full-scale invasion – also contained the "entire Swedish stock" of Pansarbandvagn 302 infantry fighting vehicles.

Elsewhere, the Netherlands plans to start delivering its F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine this autumn after Denmark begins transferring its aircraft already in the summer, Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren said in May.

Later that month, Dutch Foreign Minister Hanke Bruins Slot said the country would not object to Ukraine using Dutch-supplied F-16 fighter jets to strike targets inside Russia as a means of self-defense.

"If you have the right to self-defense, there are no borders for the use of weapons. This is a general principle," she said at an informal meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Prague in comments reported by RFE/RL.

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The Kyiv IndependentElsa Court