The European Union has provided Ukraine with more than 980,000 shells and hopes to fulfill the plan to transfer 1 million rounds of ammunition by the end of the year, even though it was unable to fulfill its previous promise to do so before the spring. This was stated by the head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell.
“We almost did it. We have already delivered more than 980 thousand shells and very soon we will deliver 1 million shells. I know we committed to reaching this level before spring and failed. But we will be able to do it before the end of the year.” – he said in an interview with the Ukrainian publication Evropeiskaya Pravda, reports TASS.
According to him, to transfer ammunition to Ukraine, the European Union had to “significantly accelerate.”
“When we promised to reach the level of 1 million shells per year by spring, we did not know what the actual production volume would be. And it wasn’t as big as we thought. Now we already have that production capacity,” he explained.
At the same time, the head of diplomacy, despite the failure to fulfill past promises, stated that even more than 1.5 million shells would be delivered to kyiv by the end of the year.
Asked about deliveries in 2025, Borrell said the EU could continue supplying Ukraine with “the same amount of ammunition” when it “reaches cruising speed.” The head of diplomacy also complained that the EU could “do everything faster”, but each step of aid required “too long discussions”.
Recall that in February 2023, Borrell promised that EU countries would supply kyiv with one million artillery shells within a year. However, at the beginning of March 2024, the European Commission was forced to admit that this promise had been less than half fulfilled. Subsequently, European officials began to phrase their statements in such a way that they gave the impression that the European Union was promising to supply one million projectiles by the end of 2024. Borrell himself said in February that the EU does not have a “magic wand” or magic to give Ukraine more shells. In mid-March, Ukrainian authorities complained that they had only received about 400,000 shells.
