EU Ambassador to Ukraine: Ukraine’s defense industry has already received its first orders for frozen Russian assets

The first tranche of proceeds from frozen Russian assets that the EU allocated for weapons for Ukraine, €400 million, was used to finance Ukrainian defense companies.

Katarína Mathernová, Ambassador of the European Union to Ukraine, shared this in an interview with European Pravda.

According to her, part of this money was spent to fund the production of Ukrainian Bohdana howitzers.

The Ambassador pointed out that six months ago, the EU approved a scheme to use the proceeds of frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine.

The EU allocated the first funds in August. At that time, the European Commission reported that they were about €1.5 billion.

“But it is much more important that €400 million of this amount will go to Ukrainian defense companies. It was Denmark that came up with this system. It was the first country to sign a contract and pay for the production of Bohdan howitzers for the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” the Ambassador said.

Therefore, the European Union, with Denmark’s help, decided to allocate part of the funds for the purchase of Ukrainian-made weapons for the Defense Forces.

“So we have injected €400 million through Denmark into the Ukrainian defense industry. You must admit that this is a rather significant amount… And it is such exquisite justice, isn’t it? You are making howitzers at the expense of Russian frozen assets,” emphasized Katarína Mathernová.

She added that Denmark had contributed some of its own funds to €400 million of Russian assets and thus placed a large order at a Ukrainian defense plant.

According to Mathernová, the next tranche of frozen Russian assets will be used to fund the production of weapons directly by the Ukrainian defense industry.

“From the next tranche, an even larger amount will go directly to the Ukrainian defense industry. Because you produce products of the same quality for less money, you do it faster, you have lower transportation and logistics costs, and in addition, manufacturers pay taxes in Ukraine and help support the economy,” she said.

Katarína Mathernová noted that she was proud of this because she was personally one of the most ardent advocates of this idea. Therefore, she is very pleased that this system is now really working.