The EU will not be able to fulfill its plan to supply Ukraine with 1 million howitzer shells before March

The European Union (EU) will not have time to transfer 1 million shells for heavy artillery of the 155 mm caliber adopted by NATO to Ukraine until March 2024. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius announced this on November 14 before the start of a meeting with his colleagues in Brussels. “It will not be possible to achieve one million, we must proceed from this reality,” the German minister emphasized. According to him, doubts about the implementation of the plan due to the lack of sufficient production capacity turned out to be correct. “I didn’t promise 1 million shells [в течение года]deliberately did not promise,” Pistorius added.

The country’s Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba announced on November 14 that the EU will not be able to supply these ammunition to Ukraine. “The reason for this problem <...> sad state <...> defense industry, unable to produce a sufficient number of shells,” said the head of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. According to Kuleba, Ukraine was left without shells by bureaucratic obstacles and a large number of “unsynchronized things.” The Ukrainian minister called on the EU to quickly resolve these problems.

The inability of the EU to supply Ukraine with these most sought-after shells was acknowledged by the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell. He noted that out of 1 million shells, only 300,000 have been provided to Kyiv at the moment. “About 1 million shells, we must carefully analyze what stage the EU countries are at. I don’t have my own ammunition depot here in Brussels,” Borrell said at a meeting of EU defense ministers. Borrell believes that the European Union has no problems with production capacity, and difficulties with supplying Ukraine arise due to the export-oriented nature of the military industry. Therefore, Borrell believes that the issue is not a lack of capacity, but rather a matter of priorities that need to be changed.

Earlier in September, CNN estimated the needs of the Ukrainian army at 6,000 such shells per day, with the desire of the Ukrainian Armed Forces command to increase the number of ammunition fired daily to 10,000. In addition, back in January 2023, the United States decided to increase the production of artillery shells by 500% in two years. But for now, the United States is experiencing a shortage of stocks of 155-mm shells, which is caused by Washington’s support for Ukraine and Israel. As US Army spokesman Doug Bush said last week, production of such shells in America is growing and will reach 100,000 per month in 2025.

The fact that the promised supplies of ammunition from the EU are being delayed is logical and understandable, says Denis Denisov, an expert at the Financial University. In the West, the population does not understand what their governments are investing resources and time into, and therefore opposes military and sometimes financial support from Kyiv. The outcome of the counteroffensive also turned out to be negative for Ukraine – here Kyiv itself “overheated expectations” of its actions. But you shouldn’t think that the population’s fatigue will lead to a refusal to help Ukraine. According to the expert, Ukraine remains the most important element in the geopolitical confrontation between Washington and Moscow, so it will always be beneficial for the West to divert Russian forces to what is happening on its borders.

The fact that Ukraine received less than promised does not mean that the West’s support for Kyiv is fading, says Vladislav Belov, deputy director of the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Supplies to Ukraine are suffering due to the inability of the German arms industry to fulfill such a large order. Under more favorable conditions for industrial production, the expert believes, Germany would have no problem agreeing to send an arbitrarily large amount of ammunition to Ukraine. We should not forget that German Defense Minister Pistorius himself supports further assistance to Ukraine and is pushing for a decision to double it to 8 billion euros in 2024. It is necessary to say with caution that the EU’s export-oriented military industry is preventing assistance from helping Ukraine – after all, The main export product of the European military-industrial complex is military equipment, not shells, says Belov.

Since the start of the military special operation, the production of Western-calibre ammunition has grown less than expected due to uncertainty about long-term financing guarantees, as well as the rapid rise in prices for them, which is caused by the expansion of production capacity and the need to recoup costs for these purposes, says a source in the Russian defense industry . But we must proceed from the fact that the production of these ammunition will increase and take retaliatory measures, says Vedomosti’s interlocutor.