(Bloomberg) -- NATO countries must boost their military aid to Ukraine, the head of the alliance urged, as Kyiv’s forces struggle to hold the line against a fresh Russian advance. 

“The Ukrainians are not running out of courage, they are running out of ammunition,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels on Thursday. “Together we have the capacity to provide Ukraine with what it needs, now we need to show the political will to do so.”

“All allies need to dig deep and deliver quickly, every day of delay has real consequences on the battlefield in Ukraine,” Stoltenberg added as he presented the alliance’s annual report. He said that two-thirds of member nations will meet the bloc’s overall spending target this year.

Authorities in Kyiv have been pressing for a steady supply of ammunition and other weapons to fend off the invaders. Ukraine’s top diplomat said Wednesday that badly needed ammunition stocks being collected through a Czech-led initiative will begin arriving on the front line in the “foreseeable future,” rather than months. 

Stoltenberg’s remarks come after US President Joe Biden slammed Donald Trump last month for suggesting he would allow Russia to attack members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that under-spent, calling the remarks “dangerous” and “un-American.”

The prospect of Trump’s return to the White House has triggered increased talk among allies about what Europe could do to ensure the US is invested in transatlantic security. With Russian President Vladimir Putin’s expansionist ambitions apparent, European officials have started warning about the prospect of an attack on NATO within the next few years.

“This year, two-thirds of allies will meet the 2% target, up from just three allies in 2014 when we agreed the defense investment pledge,” Stoltenberg said in a reference to NATO nations’ goal to spend 2% of their budgets on the sector.

He said that 2023 was the ninth consecutive year of increased defense investment across Europe and Canada, with spending rising by an unprecedented 11%. This year, NATO allies in Europe will invest a total $470 billion in defense, “amounting to 2% of their combined GDP for the first time,” Stoltenberg said.

Stoltenberg said last month that a record 18 NATO countries out of the then-31 members were expected to meet the alliance’s defense spending goal this year. Sweden became the 32nd member earlier this month and Finland last year.

New countries to meet NATO’s target on defense spending last year included Denmark and Hungary.

Polish President Andrzej Duda has called for NATO member states to raise the minimum level of defense spending to 3% of economic output. Warsaw is seeking reinforcement of the alliance’s eastern flank in the face of Russia’s war in Ukraine, Poland’s neighbor.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 that year prompted countries to start reversing a trend of scaled-back spending following the end of the Cold War. That drastically accelerated since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, most notably in Germany, which chronically underspent.

--With assistance from Zoe Schneeweiss and Slav Okov.

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