Manufacturing a million shells for Ukraine: the European Union made an important promise

Now the European Union does not say when the manufactured shells will be delivered to Ukraine.

The EU promises to produce one million artillery shells for Ukraine by spring.

According to an UNIAN correspondent, this was announced at a briefing in Brussels by the press secretary of the European Commission for the internal market, defense industry and space, Johanna Bernsel, and the representative for foreign affairs and security policy of the European Commission, Peter Stano. In particular, as Bernsel said, the European Commission is confident that the annual production capacity of the European defense industry will achieve its goal of producing one million shells.

“For artillery shells, we will soon have the capacity to produce one million and we will reach the goal by the spring, as determined when we approved the decision last summer,” Bernsel said.

At the same time, she does not provide exact dates when these shells will be delivered to Ukraine. “I do not currently have updated data on what stage member countries are at in these supplies,” Bernsel noted.

At the same time, as Stano said, by the end of 2023, more than 300 thousand shells for ground-based installations and 3 thousand 300 missiles from existing reserves had been delivered to Ukraine. “We have at least 180 thousand shells for which orders have already been placed as of the end of December, but this number is increasing in accordance with existing contracts,” Stano said.

According to him, more deliveries of shells are in progress and more contracts are being fulfilled because we are talking about joint procurement. In particular, more than 20 framework contracts are already being implemented to provide Ukraine with at least 180 thousand shells.

Those numbers will increase in the coming weeks, he said. As Stano emphasized, providing Ukraine with one million shells is a political goal.

(C)UNIAN 2024