Ukraine suffers from a severe shortage of ammunition, which is why its troops are unable to respond to Russian artillery fire as they wish.
The Czech Republic is urgently looking for nearly 1.4 billion euros from Western countries to buy artillery ammunition for Ukraine from outside the Union, sources from the financial magazine The Financial Times say.
The check has been found about 800,000 ammunition from the world, which could be delivered to Ukraine within weeks if the money is found. The check did not say where the ammunition would be bought.
For the purchase, financial promises must be obtained from individual countries, as the EU has not reached an agreement on receiving funding from the fund established by the Union for aid to Ukraine, The Financial Times reports. France and Greece insist that the fund only finance purchases from EU countries and Norway.
At least Denmark and Canada have promised money to TÅ¡ek in the past. According to The Kyiv Independent Denmark has promised to pay for 15,000 ammunition. Canada is according to sources promising more than 20 million euros.
Ukraine has to be regulated by artillery
Ukraine has a dire shortage of ammunition due to EU supply difficulties and the stalling of the US aid package.
The EU has admitted that it can deliver to Ukraine only half of the million artillery shells it promised until March.
US deliveries are frozen because congressional Republicans have blocked the approval of $60 billion in aid to Ukraine.
Ukraine estimates that it needs about 2.5 million rounds of ammunition this year.
Due to a shortage of ammunition, the Ukrainian troops have to regulate their artillery fire. According to The Kyiv Independent the situation is gradually becoming desperate. They can only fire a fraction of the amount of ammunition that the Russians help.
According to the British think tank Rusi, Russia is capable of producing around 2.5 million artillery shells per year.
The EU is increasing its production
EU foreign policy representative Josep Borrell has said that the EU’s annual production of artillery ammunition will reach 1.4 million ammunition by the end of the year.
At that time, it would exceed US production, which is estimated to rise to 1.2 million next year, The Financial Times reports.
EU production figures have not been officially announced, but The EU research service says, that according to a leaked document from a member state, it was about 230,000 rounds a year a year ago. The Estonian defense authorities have estimated the maximum capacity to have been 300,000, says the news channel CNN.
Internal Market Commissioner by Thierry Breton production had increased by 20–30 percent until last November.
You can read the latest news about the Russian attack here.