Tuesday

19th Mar 2024

EU leaders agree 1m artillery shells for Ukraine

  • Estonia’s prime minister Kaja Kallas pushed for sending ammo to Ukraine at a leaders’ meeting last month (Photo: Council of the European Union)
Listen to article

EU leaders have endorsed a plan to send Ukraine 1 million rounds of artillery ammunition in the next 12 months to help fight Russia's invasion.

EU foreign and defence ministers already approved the plan earlier this week, while leaders gave their political blessing to the plans at their regular spring summit in Brussels on Thursday (24 March).

Read and decide

Join EUobserver today

Get the EU news that really matters

Instant access to all articles — and 20 years of archives. 14-day free trial.

... or subscribe as a group

Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky thanked them via video call.

He also asked for aircraft and long-range missiles, according to EU officials.

Estonia's prime minister Kaja Kallas had pushed to send ammo to Ukraine at a previous summit last month, as Ukraine is facing shortages a year into its defence against Russian forces.

"We all have to also replenish our own stocks and we have to send ammunition to Ukraine. What is critical is sending ammunition to Ukraine fast, because that might bring a change in this war," Kallas said as she arrived at Thursday's talks.

Under the EU plan, EU countries will deliver ammunition to Ukraine from their own stocks, then countries plan to procure ammo jointly for themselves and Ukraine. As a third step, the EU's arms industry will ramp up production.

"Ukraine is protecting her territory, protecting civilians being killed under Russian bombs, we are just doing what is right, helping them, I am not worried about escalation," Slovakia's prime minister Eduard Heger said on Thursday.

Latvian premier Krišjānis Kariņš said: "Ukraine is fighting for our basic values. We need to make to make sure that we can supply them with the arms so that they can succeed in this fight".

EU leaders, in their written conclusions, welcomed the ministers' decision to "urgently deliver ground-to-ground and artillery ammunition to Ukraine and, if requested, missiles, including through joint procurement and the mobilisation of appropriate funding including through the European Peace Facility [EPF], among to provide 1 million rounds of artillery ammunition in a joint effort".

The EU has earmarked €1bn for the supply of shells, and possibly missiles, from the EPF, an EU fund from which €7bn has been slated to help Ukraine.

Poland and other close allies of Ukraine among EU countries want the EPF to be topped up by another €3.5bn.

Ukraine's use of artillery shells — 4,000 to 7,000 a day, compared to Russia's 20,000 to 50,000 — was outrunning Western manufacturing capacity, the Nato secretary general told the Guardian newspaper earlier this week.

"The current rate of ammunition expenditure is higher than the current production rate," Jens Stoltenberg said.

As part of the European initiative, earlier this week, 17 EU countries and Norway signed up to a two-year, fast-track procurement deal for 155mm artillery rounds and a seven-year project to acquire multiple ammunition types.

Agenda

Ammunition to, and grain from Ukraine top This WEEK

During the week, the European Parliament special committee on foreign interference is set to adopt its proposals to fight foreign actors, particularly Russia and China, using information manipulation — which is likely to increase as the 2024 European elections approach.

Opinion

Ukraine's accession is affordable — but corruption is the worry

We estimate the total direct cost of Ukraine to current member states via the regular EU budget at €19bn per year. But Ukraine's feeble democratic institutions have been weakened by the war, writes Zsolt Darvas of the Bruegel think-tank.

Latest News

  1. Borrell: 'Israel provoking famine', urges more aid access
  2. Europol: Israel-Gaza galvanising Jihadist recruitment in Europe
  3. EU to agree Israeli-settler blacklist, Borrell says
  4. EU ministers keen to use Russian profits for Ukraine ammo
  5. Call to change EIB defence spending rules hits scepticism
  6. Potential legal avenues to prosecute Navalny's killers
  7. EU summit, Gaza, Ukraine, reforms in focus this WEEK
  8. The present and future dystopia of political micro-targeting ads

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. Nordic Council of MinistersJoin the Nordic Food Systems Takeover at COP28
  2. Nordic Council of MinistersHow women and men are affected differently by climate policy
  3. Nordic Council of MinistersArtist Jessie Kleemann at Nordic pavilion during UN climate summit COP28
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersCOP28: Gathering Nordic and global experts to put food and health on the agenda
  5. Friedrich Naumann FoundationPoems of Liberty – Call for Submission “Human Rights in Inhume War”: 250€ honorary fee for selected poems
  6. World BankWorld Bank report: How to create a future where the rewards of technology benefit all levels of society?

Join EUobserver

EU news that matters

Join us