Jens Stoltenberg sounded the alarm on Monday, February 13, saying that the production rate of factories in NATO countries did not follow the needs of the Ukrainian army in terms of ammunition.
Will Ukraine run out of ammunition? According to Jens Stoltenberg, the Ukrainian army consumes more ammunition than European and North American industry is capable of producing, reports our correspondent in Brussels, Pierre Benazet.
The allied countries which supply arms to Ukraine still have stocks, but the industrialists must now understand that they will have substantial and long-term orders and contracts and that they can already increase the rates and investments, says a NATO country.
For the Secretary General of the Atlantic Alliance, the question is all the more pressing as the spring offensive of the russian army has actually already started. ” What Russia is doing now is sending thousands and thousands more troops, accepting a very high casualty rate to put pressure on the Ukrainians. And what the Russians lack in quality, they try to make up for in quantity. So to me, that just underscores the importance of timing, insisted Jens Stoltenberg. It is urgent to equip Ukraine with more weapons. The faster we can deliver weapons, ammunition, spare parts, fuel to the Ukrainian front, the more lives we save and the better we support efforts to find a peaceful and negotiated solution to this conflict. “.
Very high ammo consumption
The NATO countries will also train more and more Ukrainian soldiers so that they break the Soviet habit of excessively consuming ammunition. Reliable figures on the amount of ammunition used are inaccessible, but consumption levels on both sides are very high in a drawn-out conflict, a war sometimes bogged down in trenches with incessant fighting against a backdrop of omnipresent artillery. The Russians were thus firing up to 50,000 shells a day in July; Ukrainians up to 6,000, according to a French military source.
But Ukrainian consumption has risen sharply since its counter-offensive at the end of August. And it will need enormous firepower to resist the Russian offensive expected for the coming weeks. kyiv, in fact, always demands more. She recently obtained the promise of heavy tanksbut particularly wants more ground-to-air defense equipment and fighter planes, which Westerners are reluctant to deliver.
► To read also: Ukraine: NATO boss talks about more heavy weapons “in the near future”
(And with AFP)