I did speak to the European Commissioner for Defense exclusively on Wednesday, and I started by asking him whether these strikes by Russia are short wind, uh, victories or whether they could lead to a full-scale end to the bloodshed.

It's remarkable what Ukraine managed to achieve during, uh, recent half a year with really with deep strikes against, uh, oil refineries, uh, close to Moscow, close to Saint Petersburg, even far away close to Omsk, somewhere in, in Siberia.

Also, uh, the recent week, uh, attacks against, uh, Russian, uh, shadow fleet in Azov Sea and in Black Sea.

Those are really amazing achievements which are making big impact on, um, in, in general on perception both, uh, globally but also in Russia itself.

Because, uh, definitely when, uh, in Moscow and some other cities, uh, people need to stand, uh, near gasoline station, you know, for hours and hours, that's, that's an impact.

Uh, definitely we can expect that, um, uh, such kind of development, uh, should be, uh, clear argument, uh, for Putin and his surrounding, that he's not able to achieve, uh, any significant, uh, development in his war aims.

And, uh, you know, that is the m- the moment when really negotiations on, uh, just peace, uh, should start.

The countries that have, uh, successfully acquired a portion of that safe loan, the €150 billion, what are the countries particularly along Europe's eastern flank and those Baltic regions using the money for?

Would you say that one of the lessons that we need to learn from Ukraine is converging both the security and defense sector, which is traditionally top-down, with the bottom-up civil society that builds up resilience? Is that in the core of the so far Ukrainian success to prevail?

Well, definitely, Ukraine is showing also very important examples of civil society, of volunteer sector, how much they were able to bring an added value to the whole defense, the architecture defense capabilities of Ukraine.

That is what we need to learn.

From another side, I'm always saying that when Marco Rubio now is saying that Ukrainian army is the best in Europe Alex to be saying that even maybe it's best in the world I am asking myself why Ukrainian army is the best and really I agree with those No, truly this I must give why Ukraine army is the best time answering very simply that in my view it's not that just because Ukrainians have most courageous soldiers or they have smartest generals.

But also that they manage to develop and to create very innovative, very dynamic defense industry.

And that is part of their military success.

And again, here we can go much more deeply.

How much this is covering simply the existing needs? How much do you expect innovating the defense sector when we learn from Ukraine, when this money is being spent? Are we just catching up or are we Or there is something to look forward that certain industrial innovation is also happening as we speak?

How do you change this to give member states more reassurance?

Well, procedurally, Article 42.7 is even maybe easier to implement than Article 5 because it does not demand any kind of consensus in the council and so on.

So now we are really discussing very much about how to make 42.7 as president.

First of all, we need to see very clearly that there are two areas where 42.7 needs to be, uh, defined.

One area is what we can call mutual assistance in civilian area, because if you are hit by a military aggression, of course you are facing all the, you know, problems on civilian side.

And that is where European Union has really quite a well-developed institutions and policies how to assist the member states in different areas.

And that is what we can simply put into one place what I think would be good.

How do you see this tension being resolved when you are trying to make Europe more able to defend itself without the support of America inside NATO?