NATO allies launch Defence, Security and Resilience Bank

Nine NATO members and partner Ukraine agreed at the Ankara summit to create a multilateral lender – the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB). The founding members are Canada, Turkey, Albania, Belgium, Greece, Latvia, Luxembourg, Romania and Ukraine, with the head office to be based in Canada and a European hub in Luxembourg. The bank aims to raise up to £100 billion (about $134 billion) of low‑cost financing for defence projects, borrowing on international markets using a triple‑A rating and lending to governments and defence firms that lack access to private capital, especially smaller suppliers in Eastern Europe and Canada.

The DSRB is intended to lower borrowing costs for member states, provide guarantee mechanisms for defence‑sector banks and support critical projects such as weapons production, cyber‑security infrastructure and other resilience initiatives. It is scheduled to become operational in 2027. Britain, Germany and France are not among the nine founders and are pursuing a separate multilateral defence procurement mechanism. A Reuters report noted that Turkey has indicated it will not join the bank at this stage, but the overall initiative remains the same across the reports.

The bank’s creation reflects NATO’s broader push to accelerate rearmament and to address financing gaps for the alliance’s largest and smallest members alike, with Ukraine’s war economy highlighted as a potential early borrower.