Kyiv hopes to supply ammunition for Ukrainian troops in April of this year, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmygal said on March 19 during a visit to Luxembourg.
“We hope that the Czech Initiative, which Luxembourg has joined, will help us from April by ensuring that we have enough artillery ammunition,” he said at a press conference broadcast on the Luxembourg government’s YouTube channel.
Earlier that day, the official representative of the European Union's foreign policy service, Peter Stano, said that by the end of March the EU would supply Kyiv with about 500 thousand shells, and the figure of 1 million ammunition would only be reached by the end of the year.
Prior to this, on March 15, The Washington Post (WP) wrote about the critical shortage of ammunition for air defense systems. During the Munich Security Conference, politicians also noted that such a situation for the Ukrainian Armed Forces could lead to the fact that out of five missiles they would soon be able to hit only one.
On March 7, Czech President Petr Pavel announced that funds had been collected for the purchase of 800 thousand artillery shells in third countries for shipment to Ukraine. Then on March 13, it became known that ammunition under the Czech program could arrive in Ukraine in June.
The European Union approved a plan to transfer 1 million artillery shells to Kyiv within 12 months at the end of March 2023. In November, the head of the European Council, Charles Michel, said that the EU would not be able to fulfill its promises on time.
Western countries have increased military and financial support for Kiev against the backdrop of the Russian special operation to protect Donbass, the start of which was announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 24, 2022 after the situation in the region worsened due to shelling by the Ukrainian military. However, recently in the West there have been increasingly frequent statements about the need to reduce aid to Ukraine.
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