Czech Republic finds 800,000 shells and is ready to hand them over to Ukraine
The sponsors of the initiative to purchase the shells will be disclosed only after Kyiv receives the ammunition
The Ukrainian military may receive up to 500,000 155 mm artillery shells and up to 300,000 122 mm shells in the coming weeks. Third countries negotiated the purchase of this ammunition at the initiative of the Czech Republic.
Source. Bloomberg writes about this with reference to a representative of the Czech Ministry of Defence, Jan Žires.
According to the official, a number of European countries are already participating in the Czech initiative. However, Žires did not specify which suppliers could be used to purchase the shells. The suppliers and sponsors of the initiative to purchase the shells may be disclosed after Kyiv receives the ammunition, Žiresh said.
In early February, Czech President Petr Pavel announced that the Czech Republic had found 800,000 shells for Ukraine from potential suppliers outside the EU on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. The Netherlands immediately responded to this offer, promising to provide €100 million for the purchase of the shells.
At the end of February, Belgium also announced that it would participate in the purchase of ammunition, allocating €200 million.
At the same time, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed to allocate interest from Russian assets frozen in the EU since February 2022 to help Kyiv with military aid.
Along with Prague, Berlin is trying to find ammunition for the Ukrainian armed forces, the German weekly Der Spiegel wrote in February. According to the publication, Germany is in talks with India. At the same time, the German Ministry of Defence did not comment on the information about the talks directly with New Delhi.
The search for ammunition for Ukraine is taking place against the backdrop of the suspension of US military aid to Kyiv due to the unwillingness of Republicans in Congress to agree on the allocation of funds for the relevant supplies. Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kyiv has received more than 2 million 155 mm shells from the Pentagon.
Ammunition of this calibre is used in artillery guns deployed in many countries around the world – it is the most common calibre and the standard for NATO guns.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces can use 3,000 to 6,000 of these shells daily, according to military experts.
Background. As a reminder, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said that about 15 countries had signed up to the Czech Republic's plan to urgently purchase artillery ammunition for Ukraine.
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