European rearmament: the Danish model

 As reported by Milano Finanza, Leonardo has set up a new company in Ukraine: Leonardo Ukraine, based in Kyiv, is intended to bring the Italian defence group closer to the military technologies developed by the Ukrainians over more than four years of war. But if there is one European country that has taken cooperation with Ukraine to the point of structurally integrating it into its own national rearmament programme, that country is Denmark. Copenhagen, in fact, funds weapons produced in Ukraine, purchases Ukrainian technology for its own armed forces and now, thanks to a memorandum of understanding signed in 2025, hosts part of the production on its territory. Near Skrydstrup, in southern Denmark and adjacent to an F-35 fighter jet base, Fire Point – the Ukrainian manufacturer of Flamingo long-range cruise missiles – is building its first facility in a NATO country. Just on Wednesday, speaking at the Herning Defence Fair in the Scandinavian country, Fire Point announced that it had tripled its investment in the solid rocket fuel factory from 50 to 150 million euros, as reported by the Kyiv Independent.

This integration stems from the circumstances of Denmark’s rearmament, which has substantial funds earmarked to increase defence spending in line with NATO objectives, but little time in which to spend them and a defence industry that is too small and dependent on imports. According to the Danish Central Bank and SIPRI, between 2020 and 2024, 79 per cent of imported armaments came from the United States (including expenditure on the new F-35s that Copenhagen purchased during those years, which probably drove up the bill). A year before the Russian invasion of 2022, Denmark’s defence spending stood at 1.3 per cent of GDP, whilst in 2024 it was 2.3 per cent – this year, according to NATO’s latest report in July, it will reach around 3.5 per cent (Germany at 2.69 per cent and Italy at 2.1 per cent).

The acceleration came in 2025 when the government approved an additional fund of 6.7 billion euros to be spent over two years. The Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, gave the Chief of Defence a directive: “Buy, buy, buy”. The land-based air defence system, which had been dismantled twenty years earlier, was rebuilt in its entirety: eight medium- and long-range systems, with an investment of 7.8 billion euros covering both procurement and operation, with supplies contracted to the Norwegian firm Kongsberg, the German firm Diehl, the French firm MBDA and the Franco-Italian consortium Eurosam. The same sense of urgency has driven cooperation with Ukraine, albeit through a different mechanism. In 2024, after two years of donations drawn partly from its own arsenals, Copenhagen changed its approach. Instead of sending available weapons to Kyiv, it began to fund their production directly in Ukraine: the weapons arrive sooner and cost less. Thus, by 2025, the mechanism had mobilised around 1.3 billion euros for Ukrainian production.

Cooperation with Kyiv is the result of the support Copenhagen has provided. In fact, no other European country has spent such a large proportion of its economy on Ukraine. From January 2022 to June 2026, according to the Kiel Institute, Denmark has sent 10.5 billion euros to Kyiv, which, relative to pre-war GDP figures (2021), amounts to 3.13 per cent of national output, compared with 0.69 per cent for Germany. Taking into account both financial and humanitarian aid, Denmark’s total contribution rises to 11.6 billion, the sixth-highest figure among all donor countries. This gives an idea of just how much the Scandinavian country is among Kyiv’s most steadfast supporters.

Fire Point’s factory in Northern Europe marks a further step forward in the collaboration. The Danish Central Bank has calculated that, whilst reliance on imports reduces the pressure of rearmament on prices and domestic production capacity, it also increases dependence on foreign countries (particularly in terms of know-how). This is a model particularly suited to small countries that do not have a large military industry. Thus, the approach has shifted from funding production in Ukraine to manufacturing on Danish soil. And, to speed up the process, the Danish Parliament passed a law in 2025 allowing exemptions from standard procedures for all projects deemed essential to national security. In the case of Fire Point, this involves more than twenty suspended regulations, ranging from spatial planning to environmental regulations. This is Denmark’s contribution to European rearmament: spending swiftly where capabilities already exist and, where possible, ensuring that some of those capabilities take root at home.