I fully support the emergence of EU armed forces, but the complication lies in determining who is going to make that decision, Von der Leyen during a forum organized by the German television channel WDR said.

The former German Minister of Defense considered that this type of verdict must be taken at the level of Europe as a whole, as well as at the level of the leadership of each member country of the bloc.

In the midst of the process of militarization in which the European economy is now entering, parallel to the conflict in Ukraine, the head of the EU executive considered that the ideas in this sense must be deepened and perfected, but the direction is correct.

Von der Leyen is among the Western politicians who most advocate the militarization of Ukraine, where on February 24 last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a war operation to protect the uprising population of the Donbas region.

It is clear that many of the 30 members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are European, but that bloc “cannot be everywhere. There are scenarios where the request is specific to the EU,” he noted.

Russia advocated at the end of 2021 a project to ensure shared regional security in Europe, which included a call to prevent NATO expansion to its borders, but that initiative was rejected by the West.

Now Moscow warns that supplying increasingly sophisticated armaments to Kiev only prolongs and complicates confrontation.

At the time, French President Emmanuel Macron spoke out in favor of a European armed forces, the local press notes.

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