Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has confirmed the EU's possible failure to fulfill its plan to supply Ukraine with one million shells and noted that the state of the defense industry is currently deplorable. He said this during a telethon.

Earlier, Bloomberg wrote that the European Union is lagging behind its plans to provide Ukraine with one million artillery shells by March 2024. Now that most of this time has passed, the initiative has fulfilled about 30% of the planned amount and, based on the volume of contracts signed today, risks not reaching its goal.

"Unfortunately, Bloomberg is telling the truth, there are issues and we are ringing the bells. I believe that the reason for this problem is not the lack of political will in the EU to support Ukraine. There is such political will. But the state of the defense industry, which is capable of producing a sufficient number of shells, and warehouses, and the ability to conclude external contracts, is deplorable," Kuleba said.

He added that there are a lot of obstacles and unsynchronized things to this.

"The EU is working to eliminate these problems, and that is why, while in Berlin, I called on the EU to develop a comprehensive defense industry policy. That is, if we seriously want to be able to defend the whole of Europe, and Ukraine has passed this on to Europe, we need a completely new quality of "work" of the defense industries of the EU member states and candidate countries," the Foreign Minister emphasized.