European Union foreign ministers agreed Monday on a two-billion-euro plan to raid their own arsenals and jointly purchase desperately needed artillery shells for Ukraine, diplomats said.
Meeting in Brussels, the ministers backed a multipronged initiative — to be endorsed by EU leaders at a summit this week — that aims to provide Ukraine with one million shells in the next 12 months as well as replenish EU stocks.
Kyiv has complained that its forces are having to ration firepower as Russia’s year-long invasion has turned into a grinding war of attrition.
Ukraine has told the EU it wants 350,000 shells a month to help its troops hold back Moscow’s onslaught and allow them to launch fresh counter-offensives later in the year.
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“More artillery ammunition for Ukraine as fast as possible,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba urged in a social media post.
France’s Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna insisted “we have to help Ukraine more, quicker and now.”
The first part of the plan commits a further one billion euros ($1.06 billion) of shared funding to try to get EU states to tap their already stretched stocks for ammunition that can be sent quickly.
The second part would see the bloc use another one billion euros to order 155-millimetre shells for Ukraine as part of a massive joint procurement push intended to spur EU defence firms to ramp up production.
Buying weaponry together on this scale is a major new step for the EU, which has seen long-standing efforts to work more in unison on defence propelled forward by Russia’s war.
Countries have been wrangling over details, like whether it should be the EU’s defence agency or the member states who negotiate the orders and if they should buy only from producers in Europe.
Diplomats said the plan targets sending the first one billion euro’s worth of shells to Ukraine by the end of May and signing the joint contracts by the start of September.
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said the ambition was to supply one million rounds over the next year, but it was not set in stone.
“It is possible that we might not be able to reach it,” he admitted.
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