Berlin Contact Group Unleashes Patriot Barrage and 120,000-Drone Surge for Kyiv

April 2026 rhymes with March 1941: then Lend-Lease armed embattled allies; now Germany and Britain assume that supplier mantle, signalling Europe’s first major rearmament drive since NATO’s founding in 1949. The shift reflects two long-running currents: Europe hedging against fluctuating U.S. commitment, and the ascendancy of cheap, networked drones—today’s answer to 1916’s tanks—as the mass-production weapon of choice. Washington’s muted presence (the U.S. defence chief absent) hints at a rewiring of trans-Atlantic roles. If sustained, historians a century hence may date the emergence of a distinct European-Ukrainian defence ecosystem—and the normalization of drone swarms in conventional war—to this Berlin conclave.