Canada and eight partners are building a new defence bank, and Ukraine is at the table from the start. Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne named Albania, Belgium, Greece, Latvia, Luxembourg, Romania, Turkiye and Ukraine alongside Canada as the countries establishing the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB).
The Nine Founders
The partners are due to sign the bank's founding agreement in Luxembourg on 30 November 2026. Its headquarters will be in Canada, with a European hub in Luxembourg. The plan is for the DSRB to become fully operational in 2027. Membership will be open to other allies and close partners.
The goal is to build a lasting financial institution for countries and defence manufacturers that need capital to buy equipment, increase output and strengthen supply chains. Ukraine's place among the founders counts since its arms industry is confronting those needs today rather than in some hypothetical future crisis.
Why the Credit Rating Matters
The proposed mechanism is to combine member-state backing with public and private capital. The bank aims to secure a AAA credit rating. That would allow it to borrow for longer and at lower cost than a single country or company might manage by itself. It could then lend for weapons procurement, factory expansion and the supply networks needed to keep production running.
The AAA rating is a target, not a rating already awarded. Nor will signing the agreement in November put loans into Ukrainian factories overnight. The point is to create financing that can survive beyond one budget announcement or one procurement cycle.
Defence production cannot expand reliably if companies must finance long-term capacity with short-term money.
The Opening for Ukraine
The DSRB is intended to offer financing on equal terms, including to smaller states and small and medium-sized defence businesses. For Ukrainian manufacturers, that could mean another route to fund their own weapons production and joint projects with partners. A firm able to finance machinery, components and a dependable supply chain can take on orders it could not fulfil through improvisation alone.
Ukraine has the people, designs and wartime experience to build more. Access to patient capital determines whether that capability becomes sustained production. The test for this bank will be whether its promised terms actually reach Ukrainian factories when it begins operating.
