The EU wanted to deliver one million artillery shells to Ukraine within a year. Nothing will come of it. Now there is a new goal.
The EU has admitted that its ambitious plans to supply Ukraine with artillery shells have failed. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Wednesday on the sidelines of a meeting of defense ministers in Brussels that only a little more than half of the promised quantity of one million shots will probably have been delivered by March.
The new goal is now to reach the one million mark at least this year. According to Borrell, member states have pledged to deliver around 630,000 more bullets between March and then. Then there will be more than a million.
On March 20 last year, the EU states promised Ukraine that they would provide one million new artillery shells for the defensive war against Russia within twelve months. They should be organized from the stocks of the member states, but also through new joint procurement projects and prevent shortages of the Ukrainian armed forces.
According to the latest figures from the EU Foreign Service, only around 330,000 of the promised artillery shells have been delivered so far. Another 200,000 or so are expected to follow within the 12-month period. Then we will probably have achieved a little more than 52 percent of the goal, said Borrell.
Pistorius predicted failure
Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius had already predicted that the ambitious plans would fail last year. “One million will not be reached. One has to assume that,” said the SPD politician in November. He cited insufficient production capacity as the reason.
However, politicians from countries like Estonia and Borrell also repeatedly gave other reasons. Borrell emphasized several times that, in his opinion, the problem was not industrial capacity and pointed out that significant quantities of ammunition produced in the EU were delivered to other countries due to existing contracts.
The Estonian government, among others, therefore suggested conducting negotiations with these buyer countries or buying ammunition from third countries.
Source: Stern
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