Has Ukraine received one million shells from the EU? Borrell reveals figures

According to Josep Borrell, Europe will deliver over 1.5 million munitions to Ukraine by the end of the year.

The EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, stated that Europe is nearly fulfilling its promise to deliver one million artillery shells to Ukraine. He shared this in an interview with “Ukrainska Pravda.”

According to Borrell, the delivery of shells will soon exceed one million.

“We’ve almost done it. We’ve already delivered more than 980,000 shells, and very soon we’ll deliver 1 million shells,” said the EU representative.

He acknowledged that Europe was unable to meet the promised delivery level by spring but was eventually able to significantly speed up production.

“By the end of the year, we will have delivered over 1.5 million munitions to Ukraine,” Borrell announced.

He added that, in addition to these, many munitions were provided to Ukraine through bilateral agreements with EU member states. Additionally, there is a Czech initiative for purchasing munitions, though “not as quickly as we had hoped.”

The EU official expressed expectations that next year Europe would be able to supply Ukraine with a similar amount of munitions.

“The problem wasn’t in delivering the available munitions but in production. When we promised to reach the level of one million shells per year by spring, we didn’t know the real production capacity, and it was not as large as we thought. Now, we already have this production capacity,” emphasized Borrell.

It should be noted that in 2023, the EU promised Ukraine one million artillery shells to support the efforts on the front line, but their production and delivery have faced delays due to challenging production and logistical conditions. Some of the shells have already been delivered from EU countries’ reserves. Since most shells require complex components and there is high demand from other countries, this has led to restrictions on prioritizing deliveries to Ukraine.

Iryna Labyak

Tags: EU Politics russia ukraine war