Next week, the European Union will sign a joint plan for procurement of ammunition for Ukraine. However, the bloc reached an impasse on the question of how to provide Kyiv with the 155-mm shells it needs this year.
This is reported by Bloomberg.
Sources say that the EU is trying to find a way to meet Ukraine's urgent ammunition needs, despite the fact that member states have already reached a political agreement to provide Kyiv with additional shells.
The Ukrainian authorities said that this year the Armed Forces will need 1 million rounds of ammunition. According to Estonia's calculations, such a number of shells will cost 4 billion euros.
Ukraine uses an average of 60,000 to 210,000 shells per month, but the European defense industry is able to produce only 25,000 shells during this period of time. Meanwhile, Russia produced from 20,000 to 60,000 shells per day.
The interlocutor of the publication stated that the EU countries have not yet announced how much money they are ready to allocate this year for the purchase of ammunition and how these funds will be structured.
Some countries would like to see mandatory funding proportional to the size of each state's economy, while others want any contributions to be voluntary.
New funding is largely a political decision for member states. The issue - along with an agreement on the number of missiles to be supplied - is expected to come to the fore when EU foreign and defense ministers meet next week, ahead of a leaders' summit in Brussels, where the topic will also be on the agenda.
