EU provides Ukraine with over 980,000 shells - Josep Borrell

“We have already delivered more than 980,000 rounds, and very soon we will deliver 1 million rounds,” he says.

Despite the fact that the original plan was to reach this goal by spring, the EU has faced some challenges.

“I know that we committed to reaching this level by spring and we failed. But by the end of the year, we will be able to. And we have accelerated significantly for this purpose,” the diplomat emphasizes.

According to Borrell, in addition to the main supply, Ukraine also received a significant amount of ammunition under bilateral agreements with individual EU member states, as well as through the Czech initiative, which, although progressing more slowly than expected, is still an important component of the assistance.

“In total, by the end of the year we will have delivered more than 1.5 million pieces of ammunition to Ukraine,” he adds.

As for plans for the next year, Borrell assured that the EU is ready to support Ukraine with stable supplies.

“Once we reach cruising speed, we will be able to continue to supply Ukraine with the same amount of ammunition,” he says.

The problems, according to the diplomat, were not only in the transfer of existing stocks but also in production capacities.

“When we promised to reach the level of 1 million shells a year by spring, we did not know what the real production capacity was, and it was not as high as we thought,” Borrell summarizes.

Ammunition for Ukraine

In March 2023, the EU defense and foreign ministers agreed on a plan for joint ammunition procurement aimed at providing Ukraine with 1 million rounds of ammunition within a year. Representatives of seven countries participated in the discussion of the plan.

However, in November, the EU announced that it would probably not be able to fully implement the plan to supply the promised 1 million artillery shells to Ukraine by March 2024.

Meanwhile, European Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton said that EU defense companies were projected to be able to produce over 1 million shells by spring 2024. However, the EU failed to deliver the shells on time.