Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Wednesday that defence cuts "must never happen again".
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Denmark will spend an additional 50bn kroner (€6.7bn) on defence over the next two years, amid the ongoing threat Russia poses to Europe, the Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has announced.
Speaking beside her foreign and defence ministers at a press conference at the Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen, the Danish leader promised a massive rearmament drive, saying it was “Denmark’s security that is at stake”.
Frederiksen stressed that it had been a mistake for countries like Denmark to have cut defence spending in recent decades.
“Don't cut back on defence again,” the Danish prime minister said. “It must never happen again.”
As a result of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine, European security is under threat, she said.
“We don't know what he [Putin] is planning, but we know that he and Russia are in the process of rearming,” Frederiksen added.
In a message to her Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen, she instructed him to “buy, buy, buy!”.
“If we can't get the best equipment, buy the next best. There's only one thing that counts now, and that's speed.”
However, Danish political commentators said the press conference was short on details about what the new budget would actually be spent on.
Denmark will now be spending more than 3% of its GDP on defence, according to Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmusse.
The additional spending pledged on Wednesday comes after the Danish authorities' announced last year that they would spend 190bn kroner (€25.5bn) on the military over the next 10 years.
The latest expansion of the Danish military budget comes after the new US President Donald Trump has called on European nations to spend more on defence.
Trump’s administration sent shockwaves through Europe last week when the US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told the continent’s leaders that they — and not the US — should guarantee European security.
European leaders have also been alarmed by Trump’s decision to sideline the Ukrainians from talks this week in Saudi Arabia about a potential ceasefire in Ukraine.
Trump has even attacked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy personally. In a social media post on Wednesday, the US president called the democratically elected war-time leader a "dictator".