EU Seeks Ammunition Boost for Ukraine in Bid to Near Goal

(Bloomberg) — The European Union will aim to boost ammunition deliveries to Ukraine as it tries to make up for delays in meeting an ambitious target of sending 1 million artillery rounds by March, Estonia’s defense minister said.

Most Read from Bloomberg

While the bloc agreed last year on the deadline, only one third of the rounds has been delivered to Ukraine with another 30% due by March, Hanno Pevkur said in an interview in Brussels. The goal at the time wasn’t backed by money, he added on the eve of a meeting of EU defense ministers Wednesday.

“We’re lacking still around one third of that,” Pevkur said. “This is why we need to send a clear signal that we have either the shells from stocks or the money.” Pevkur added he expects his counterparts to commit at their meeting to finding the rounds or funding for shells for Ukraine.

The EU agreed early last year to send the 1 million rounds to Ukraine after a push by Estonia to make the pledge. EU officials told its 27 member states late last year that it’s likely to fall short of its ammunition target, despite efforts to ramp up the bloc’s defense industry.

EU defense ministers have been asked to present what they have done, as well as their plans on how to reach the target at the meeting in Brussels, the bloc’s foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell told reporters before the gathering began Wednesday.

“Ukraine needs more ammunition, there is a big imbalance on the fire capacity from one side compared to the other, and this gap has to be filled,” he said.

Just as Ukraine faces shortages in financial and military aid from allied nations, Russia has been bolstered by an influx of supplies from North Korea, which according to a South Korea lawmaker shipped 1 million shells to Russia last year.

Estonia’s Pevkur said at least seven other countries, including Poland and the Nordics, were ready to pledge more money toward the goal. Even if the EU is unlikely to meet the March deadline, having fresh funding for production means the rounds will eventually be sent to Ukraine, he added.

The bloc is also bracing for a show-down with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the EU leader closest to Russian President Vladimir Putin, at a summit of leaders Thursday. Leaders will try to agree on a €50 billion ($54.5 billion) aid package for Ukraine that Hungary blocked in December.

The tally of ammunition sent to Ukraine may get a boost if defense ministers decide to count bilateral contributions that EU states hadn’t sought reimbursement for, allow orders made abroad or change internal deadlines for reimbursement, senior EU diplomats told Bloomberg. There’s also a push to prioritize shipments to Ukraine over other export destinations.

But the bloc is unlikely to meet the target even with those tweaks, the diplomats said.

Some member states are more hopeful though. Latvia’s Defense Minister Andris Spruds told Bloomberg on Wednesday that he’s “very optimistic and sure that in the near time we’ll be able to put together 1 million,” adding that despite “some challenges,” the goal should be reached by the end of March.

A spokesperson for the Defense Ministry in Belgium, which currently holds the EU presidency, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Two other diplomats said that the EU set itself up for failure by setting such a demanding target amid supply chain shortages, but that the target itself has helped turbo-charge ammunition production for Ukraine.

Pevkur pointed to EU estimates that the bloc is set to produce as much as 1.4 million ammunition rounds this year, showing a tripling in the production rate.

“That means we can still say this one million initiative gave us the result we wanted to see,” he said. “Now we just need to work.”

–With assistance from Jorge Valero and Alberto Nardelli.

(Updates with statements from EU, Latvia from fifth paragraph)

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

©2024 Bloomberg L.P.