A month after Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Brussels, in which he conveyed first-hand to European leaders the urgent material needs of the Ukrainian army, the Union has given the green light to the formula to speed up the delivery of shells in Kyiv A plan that will make it possible to deliver “one million units of artillery ammunition over the next twelve months”, specified yesterday the high representative of European Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, who described the decision as “historic” they arrived together by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Defense of the Twenty-Seven.
The agreement, reached in record time taking into account that defense remains a national competence and the complexity of any arms and ammunition purchase operation, envisages devoting 2,000 million euros from the European Fund for Peace to the launching a plan with simultaneous actions in the short, medium and long term to get 155 and 152 millimeter projectiles to Kyiv as soon as possible, while strengthening the production capacity of the local European industry.
Immediately, the fastest way to get ammunition to Ukraine is through the donation of national arsenals or the donation of orders that are about to be delivered. The EU will dedicate 1,000 million euros to the replacement of this ammunition. In the meantime, a plan will be launched to make the first joint purchases of weapons (ammunition, for now) in the history of the EU, an operation to which another 1,000 million will be dedicated for the time being.
The acquisition can be done both through the European Defense Agency (18 countries, not including Spain, which have joined the project and more are expected to join) or coalitions of countries that renegotiate already signed contracts to increase orders. Once the purchases are signed, which is expected to be in May, the delivery of ammunition would be six to eight months later.
NATO has also sounded the alarm about the urgency of providing ammunition to Ukraine. According to estimates, its army fires about 200,000 projectiles a month, eight times more ammunition than European industry is now able to produce (25,000 a month).
In view of these figures, the debate arose whether to buy only from arms companies located in the EU or whether, in the name of speed, when this is not possible, agreements should be signed with third-party companies countries, such as the USA, Israel or South Korea, an option defended for example by the Netherlands. At the beginning of yesterday’s meeting, Borrell asked the ministers to be “pragmatic” and finally, in order not to prolong the discussions any longer, it was agreed that for now the purchases will be limited to companies from the EU and Norway, the position defended in particular by France.
The third leg of the plan is to increase the production capacity of the European arms industry so that national arsenals can be restocked as soon as possible and maintain a sustained supply to the Ukrainian forces, for which they will encourage joint purchases so that companies are encouraged to invest. The heads of state and government of the EU will support the agreement at the summit that will take place at the end of the week in Brussels.
