News World The EU asked its members to send ammunition stocks to Ukraine

The EU asked its members to send ammunition stocks to Ukraine

Borrell calls for all European Union countries to send all available weapons to kyiv

The head of diplomacy of the European Union (EU), Josep Borrell, called on Monday for the 27 countries of the bloc to mobilize their ammunition reserves to deliver Ukraine as soon as possible to face the Russian offensive in the Donbass region. , and some European countries have already expressed their agreement with the proposal.

“If the problem is urgent and time is measured in weeks or a couple of months at most, the solution to resolve Ukraine’s urgent request has to come from trying to use what already exists,” said the chancellor at a press conference after the meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels.

He stressed that the situation that Ukraine is going through, with a positional war scenario in which it finds itself with less artillery capacity than the Russian Army, requires that Member States give “priority” to their current ammunition capacities and contracted military orders with the industry, picked up the Europa Press news agency.

Borrell warned that placing new orders with the arms industry to supply Ukraine would take more than “weeks”.

For this reason, although he said that he viewed favorably make a joint ammunition purchase plan, at a European level, urgently called for donating material from the arsenals themselves and from orders in progress.

“The rate at which ammunition is consumed is higher than the rate at which it is produced,” Borrell said, and insisted that the increase in industrial capacity is not achieved “in weeks.”

AFP photo
Photo: AFP

In any case, today’s meeting in Brussels served to open the debate between the European partners on joint purchases of 155-mm caliber ammunition.

Borrell anticipated that the European Commission and the European Defense Agency will present at the meeting of European Defense Ministers on March 7 and 8 in Sweden a proposal so that the Twenty-seven can advance this plan.

Thus, he said that there is a will to support Ukraine and supply what they need in terms of weapons, but that the plan must be defined and “go from the muses to the theater”.

According to Borrell, the problem is not the financial capacity of the EU to face this joint purchase but “the method”, that is, “who contracts with whom, with what procedures and how does the armament get to Ukraine”.

Upon his arrival in the Belgian capital, Borrell had insisted on the urgency of the issue: “It is the most urgent issue and if we fail with this, the outcome of the war is at risk,” he assured.

On the table is Estonia’s proposal to provide the European Peace Mechanism with euros to purchase projectiles.

In previous statements, the Estonian Foreign Minister, Urmas Reinsalu, had indicated that the plan consists of an endowment of 4,000 million euros to acquire around one million rounds of 155-millimeter artillery projectiles.

According to the proposal document, the initiative could invite like-minded partners to join.

AFP photo
Photo: AFP

“We must make an extraordinary effort for rapid decision-making and implementation of the initiative, as soon as possible, already in 2023: this is what the seriousness of the situation in Ukraine requires”Pick up the proposal.

“Ukraine runs out of ammunition. More weapons means hastening the end of the genocidal war,” Reinsalu said, insisting that 2023 should be the year to end the war if Ukraine has enough weapons and ammunition.

Despite the fact that the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, could not attend the meeting with his European counterparts as planned, he indicated his support for the plan in a message on Twitter.

“Thanks to Estonia for proposing the direct joint purchase of arms and ammunition. We strongly support the initiative and urge its implementation,” he said.

For his part, the Minister of Foreign Affairs LithuanianGabrielius Landsbergis, showed his support for the plan of joint purchases, stressing that the Twenty-seven must express a “clear commitment to the Ukrainian victory.”

Spain He also opened up to the proposal and according to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares, the plan “does not sound bad” to the country and insisted that it can contribute with its “powerful” defense industry and ” highly technological.”

The ministers were also scheduled to discuss the 10th round of sanctions against Russia, a “substantial and comprehensive” package that seeks to increase pressure on Russian industrial capacity and further disconnect Moscow from Europe. in technological terms.

With the deadline to approve the sanctions for the first anniversary of the war, at this point, diplomatic sources indicated that the measures are on track and will not address divisive aspects such as sanctions on diamonds or the Russian nuclear sector.

It remains to be seen if the package finally includes sanctions against Belarus, which have been in the works for weeks, but with no final agreement.

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