Portugal’s minister of national defence has announced today that the country will be contributing €50 million to the initiative to buy weapons from the United States to “make them available to Ukraine”.

The announcement was made by Nuno Melo at the end of a ministerial meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

“We announced that we will invest €50 million in PURL [Ukraine’s Priority Needs Initiative], just as we announced that we will invest €10 million in the British drone initiative (…(, despite being a British initiative, it has invariably focused on the production of domestic drones, therefore, it is also an investment in the national defence industry,” he said.

The money is included in the over €220 million that Portugal has already pledged for Ukraine this year – thus 2025 won’t actually see the government spending any more in terms of cash.

New data on Western military aid to Ukraine is showing that it plunged by 43% in July and August compared to the first half of the year.

The fall occurred even after European allies began buying American weapons under (PURL), which does not involve all EU Member States, and sees different countries contributing different amounts.

Ahead of today’s meeting, NATO secretary general Mark Rutte said he hoped more countries would come on board today (which Portugal and a number of others have done). PURL has already allocated over €2 billion worth of “necessary lethal and non-lethal military aid”, said Rutte, while head of the Pentagon Pete Hegseth, expressed hope that countries would step-up their purchases “to equip Ukraine for a peaceful end to this conflict”.