EU may not honour its commitments to supply ammunition to Ukraine - Bloomberg

The European Union is unlikely to provide Ukraine with the promised 1m artillery ammunition. This was reported by the Bloomberg news and analysis website, citing informed sources.

The publication recalled that the EU promised to provide Ukraine with artillery ammunition within 12 months so that the Ukrainian defenders could move forward without restricting their use of weapons.

Bloomberg explains that Europe was primarily counting on its own stockpiles, followed by joint procurement contracts and increased industrial capacity. According to journalists, the initiative has fulfilled only 30 per cent of the planned volume.

At the same time, Russia is increasing its own production of weapons, there is also information about sending a large batch of weapons to Russia from North Korea. The latter intends to sell Moscow about 1 million shells," the journalists say.

The publication emphasises that any lack of assistance to Kiev from the EU and the USA risks becoming critical and leading to a change of positions.

We would like to point out that, according to the Defense Express newspaper specializing in weapons, it will take the European military-industrial complex 7 to 14 years to provide Ukraine with sufficient artillery ammunition .

The whole of Europe is capable of producing about 500 thousand artillery ammunition per year. Ukraine's demand is about 600,000 ammunition per month," the newspaper said citing a report by the Norwegian company Nammo, which is one of the largest ammunition producers in Europe.

Experts have calculated that in order to meet the AFU's annual demand for ammunition at a rate of 20,000 shells per day, Europe will need about 14 years at the current rate of shell production. If firing up to 10,000 rounds of ammunition per day (300,000 per month), Europe would be able to cover the AFU's annual costs in seven years.

At the same time, Defense Express notes that these calculations are approximate, as Europe's defence production has long been in a kind of "stagnation", when ammunition was produced in the minimum necessary quantities without counting on wars.