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By Gwladys Fouche and Nora Buli
OSLO (Reuters) - Norway will more than double its financial pledge to Ukraine this year while also hiking its own defence spending, the prime minister said on Thursday, declaring the Nordic country faced its most serious security situation for 80 years.
Norway, home to the world's largest sovereign wealth fund with assets of $1.8 trillion, has seen soaring income from gas sales to Europe as a result of Russia's 2022 Ukraine invasion, and faces pressure at home and abroad to increase its aid.
The government and opposition leaders agreed on Thursday to raise this year's Ukraine funding to 85 billion Norwegian crowns ($7.83 billion), up from a plan agreed in November of 35 billion crowns, Labour Party Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said.
Stoere's move marks the latest example of a European country scrambling to boost defence spending and support for Ukraine after President Donald Trump froze U.S. military aid to Kyiv and fuelled doubts about its commitment to European NATO allies.
It comes on the same day as European Union members, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in attendance, are meeting in Brussels to pledge more money to Ukraine and towards their own defence. Norway is not in the EU but is part of NATO.
The Nordic nation now faces "the most serious security situation for our country since World War II", Stoere said in an address to parliament earlier on Thursday.
He said he would come back to parliament at a later time with revised defence spending plans.
In recent days Norwegian politicians have been debating how much more Oslo should support Ukraine, given the drop in U.S. support for Kyiv and the fact that Norway's neighbours such as Sweden and Denmark have so far made bigger donations.
Norway's opposition Conservative Party supported the increase, and said further increases could be considered later this year.
'THE ONLY RIGHT THING TO DO'
In the parliament's upstairs gallery, a delegation of six Ukrainian lawmakers listened to the PM's address.
One of them, Volodymyr Kabachenko from the opposition Batkivshchyna party, said he welcomed Norway's move and said the country could do more, noting it was the only European nation that could finance aid with its own money rather than debt.
"If Norway wants to secure the lives of its own citizens ... the only right thing to do is to provide Ukraine with money and we will be fighting on behalf of Ukraine, Europe and Norway," Kabachenko told Reuters.
In 2023 alone, inflows to Norway's wealth fund from oil and gas revenues swelled to 1.1 trillion crowns - or around $100 billion – nearly three times the previous record set in 2008.
($1 = 10.8493 Norwegian crowns)
(Reporting by Gwladys Fouche and Nora Buli, editing by Terje Solsvik, William Maclean)
