Ukraine makes weapons 'faster and cheaper' than somewhere else in Europe – and that is a problem, warns Danish PM

• Ukraine can make weapons “faster and cheaper” than elsewhere in Europe, said the Prime Minister of Denmark.

• “We have a problem, friends, if a war in war can produce faster than the rest of us,” said Mette Frederiksen at the Munich safety conference.

• The defense expenditure of Europe has risen in recent years, but the problems remain.

The Prime Minister of Denmark has said that Ukraine is able to produce weapons “faster and cheaper” than somewhere else in Europe, even though he is at war, something she said that the West should alert.

Speaking on Saturday at the Security Conference of Munich, attended by Business Insider, the Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned that Europe should increase production efforts in the future, together with the US to do this.

“We have a problem, friends, if a country at war can produce faster than the rest of us,” she said. “I am not saying that we are in wartime, but we cannot say that we are more in peacetime. So we have to change our way of thinking.”

Frederiksen added that Europe needed “a sense of urgency” and should reduce legislation and bureaucracy to ensure that Ukraine gets “what they need, but also to ensure that we can protect ourselves.”

Since Russia launched its full invasion of Ukraine in Ukraine in February 2022, Ukraine has increased the production of domestic weapons, which produces an increasing number of homemade products such as missiles, houwits and drones.

The Ukrainian President VolodyMyr Zenskyy said earlier that 30% of military equipment used Ukraine in their own country in 2024.

Denmark has led a large project to make more weapons in Ukraine, giving Frederiksen a special insight into the production efforts of Ukraine.

Although Frederiksen did not point to specific figures, the Defense industry of Ukraine in some areas is a flowering, matching or even surpassed or even surpassed.

The widespread use of drones on the battlefield has seen Ukraine a leader in drone production, where Kyiv said that in 2024 the country produced more than 1.5 million drones in the first person.

Ukraine also said it made 2.5 million mortar and artillery shells from January to November 2024, while the EU said it would make about 2 million artillery shells in 2025.

Europe has considerably increased defense and production in recent years, but some officials say that much more needs to be done.

Dovilė Šakalienė, the Lithuanian Minister of Defense, told Business Insider in Munich that “Europe should improve our Defense spending out very quickly and very considerably in order to be able to stand on the same basis with the United States.”

The German defense minister, Boris Pistorius, also appealed to the issue at the weekend and said: “The critics are right that we have to do more and that we have done too little in the years before, far too little.”

Mark Rutte, the Secretary General of NATO, has also often called on European members of the Alliance to stimulate military expenses.

Speaking in Munich, he said that the US was “right” to think “that we have to perform, we have to spend more.”

He added that both the US and Europe “did not produce almost enough” and that Russia produces more ammunition in three months than NATO in a year.

But Vice -President JD Vance, who also appeared in Munich, seemed unmoved by the commitments of Europe and used his speech to attack what he called in Europe free expression violations. Vance said it was “great” that Europe intended to stimulate defense expenditure, but that he was more concerned about the threat to Europe from “within” instead of Russia.

For his part, Trump has long since called to spend Europe more on defense, threatening to leave NATO if that did not happen and even suggesting before he was re-elected that he would allow Russia to attack NATO members who do not spend enough on defense.

Some countries have already taken major steps to stimulate expenditure. In 2024, Poland led the Alliance in Defense spending as a percentage of GDP, where Warsaw invested more than 4% of his economic output in the defense.

Lithuania and Estonia have also promised both to increase their own defense expenditure to 5% of GDP, and said that although they agreed with Trump's demands, they not only took that step because of the president, but because of the threat from Russia.

But the future of the US-European Alliance seems more than just the expenditure for defense. The Trump team suggested in recent days that Europe could be sidelined in the negotiations between Russia and the US about Ukraine and that it was “unrealistic” that Ukraine could get all the territory of Russia back.

Despite the rising tensions, many leaders in Munich said there were still opportunities to work with the US to combat Moscow.

Kristrún Mjöll FroStadóttir, the Prime Minister of Iceland, said that “it is easy to become very negative” about the relationship between the US and Europe and the situation “uncomfortable” because the sovereignty of Ukraine is at stake. But “that doesn't mean that relationships with the US should be bad,” she went on.

Šakalienė added that although Trump had “unique” and “unexpected” negotiating tactics, that was not necessarily a negative thing, because “playing due to the rules does not work with Russia.”

Like many other European officials at the weekend said that the US also needs Europe and its capacities as an ally, she continued.

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