Kuleba: EU will not hand over the committed million shells to Ukraine until March

The European Union will not be able to fulfill its plan to supply a million artillery shells to Ukraine until March 2024.

Dmytro Kuleba, Head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, stated this on the air of the telethon.

According to him, this is due to the state of defense production and bureaucratic obstacles.

The Minister was asked to comment on a recent Bloomberg article. The article outlined that the European Union is behind schedule in delivering 1 million 155-mm artillery shells to Ukraine by March 2024.

According to the publication, as of now, Ukraine has received about 30% of the planned supply, and given the volume of signed contracts, the plan may not be fulfilled in time.

“Unfortunately, Bloomberg is telling the truth. There are issues, and we are, let’s say, ringing the bells a lot and loudly,” said Kuleba.

He added that the reason for this problem is not the lack of political will in the EU, but the “deplorable state of the defense industry” and “a lot of unsynchronized things, a lot of bureaucracy.”

“The European Union is working to eliminate these problems, and that is why, while in Berlin, I called on the European Union to develop a holistic policy in the field of defense industries,” the Foreign Minister added.

According to him, the EU has already started taking certain steps to correct this situation.

On November 13, during a press conference following the EU Council of Ministers for Foreign Affairs results, Josep Borrell, Head of the EU Diplomatic Department, noted that the European Union did not abandon the goal of supplying Ukraine with 1 million ammunition for artillery by March 2024.

However, he mentioned that the promise may not be fulfilled in time. Everything will depend on the speed of ammunition production at the factories.

Borrell stated that the EU has completed the first part of the supply plan from the existing arsenals of European countries. He estimates that about 300 thousand artillery shells were transferred to Kyiv. Now the issue is with the production of new shells and, accordingly, an increase in their production at EU enterprises.