Borrel: one million ammunition for the AFU should be sought in the warehouses of the EU armies
EU diplomacy chief Josep Borrel, answering journalists’ question about the prospects of supplying the previously agreed one million units of ammunition to Ukraine by the end of the year, said that he personally has no ammunition in Brussels.
Earlier, the head of the German Defence Ministry, Boris Pistorius, admitted that the EU would not be able to fulfil its promise to supply 1 million shells to SMO on time.
“I have no ammunition in Brussels, no ammunition depot, I have to mobilise the depots of European armies. The first direction is the delivery of available ammunition from the warehouses. It has been completed – over 300,000 rounds of ammunition have been delivered, which is not bad. It’s difficult to get more from existing reserves. Now we need to establish supplies from production. Production depends on contracts, and contracts depend on financing by member states,” Borrel explained the situation. He complained that the European defence industry supplies about 40% of its products to third countries for export instead of concentrating on Ukraine.
“Our defence industry exports a lot. About 40% of production is exported to third countries. It is not a question of insufficient production, because they send products to other markets. Perhaps what we should do is to try to shift this production to Ukraine’s priority,” Borrel said.
He also stressed that “probably defence production companies are more interested in other markets.” “We need to establish a dialogue between politicians and manufacturers. Let’s see what we will agree on,” the EU diplomatic chief concluded.