Australia and New Zealand Join PURL, Expanding Global Support for Ukraine’s Weapons Pipeline

Australia and New Zealand have joined the PURL  program supplying weapons and equipment to Ukraine, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said at a press conference on December 3.

“Burden sharing is now much better than it was, say, four or six weeks ago. And the fact that now even New Zealand and Australia, which are not NATO members but are close partners of the alliance through the Indo-Pacific region, have also committed to [participate in PURL]. This is really great news, and it gives us a stable flow of weapons to Ukraine from the necessary US stocks,” Rutte said.

Ukraine’s Ambassador to Australia, Vasyl Myroshnychenko, said New Zealand has pledged $8.7 million to the PURL initiative to support Ukraine.

“New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defense Minister Judith Collins announced a contribution of 15 million New Zealand dollars (8.7 million US dollars) to the NATO-US initiative aimed at supplying weapons and equipment to Ukraine,” he wrote.

Australia will provide $63 million in assistance to Ukraine, and the funds will not be limited to PURL, the ambassador added.

“The Government of Australia has announced military assistance to Ukraine worth 95 million Australian dollars (63 million US dollars). This amount includes 50 million Australian dollars for PURL, 2 million Australian dollars for the Drone Coalition, and 43 million Australian dollars for military equipment, including tactical air-defense radar systems, ammunition, and combat engineering tools,” the diplomat said.

Earlier, a tank unit of Ukraine’s 425th Assault Regiment “Skala” was equipped with American-made, Australian-donated M1 Abrams, becoming the second formation in the Armed Forces of Ukraine to field the advanced main battle tanks.

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