The EU will miss its target of supplying Ukraine with one million artillery shells and missiles by next March, the German defence minister has said.
Boris Pistorius’s comments, the first public admission by a senior European minister that the target would not be met, were made before a summit of EU defence ministers in Brussels on Wednesday.
“It is safe to assume that the one million rounds will not be reached,” Mr Pistorius said.
Diplomats and officials have been expressing scepticism privately for months about the goal. The target was set in response to Ukraine’s urgent need for 155mm artillery shells.
The EU agreed earlier this year on a three-pronged approach to boost supplies as it emerged that Ukraine was burning through ammunition faster than the United States and Nato could produce it.
The EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, said as he arrived at the summit that the bloc had provided more than 300,000 artillery shells and missiles under the first track of the scheme, which involved EU member states delivering from their own stockpiles.
He said the focus was now on the second element of the scheme, in which EU countries order new shells from industry under a joint procurement initiative.
Mr Borell suggested that an immediate issue was the export commitments of EU defence manufacturers outside the bloc. “So maybe what we have to do is to try to shift this production to the priority one, which is the Ukrainians,” he said.
However, Thierry Breton, the EU’s industry commissioner, said arms companies were making progress in increasing production and that a separate target of boosting European production of 155mm shells to a million a year would be met.
In Russia, air defences destroyed four Ukrainian drones over four Russian regions, including the Moscow region, overnight, Russia’s defence ministry said in a statement. According to Reuters, the drones were destroyed in Moscow, Tambov, Orlov and Bryansk regions, the ministry said.
In Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has used his regular address to pledge to meet all the recommendations set out by the European Commission to help Ukraine on its path towards EU membership.
“For Ukraine, it is a matter of principle to implement all the recommendations of the European Commission, all seven recommendations, and fulfill everything that is required at this point of our path to the European Union,” he said.
Fighting around the shattered eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka has grown more fierce, Ukraine’s military has said, with Moscow’s forces intensifying air bombardments and trying to move forward with ground forces. – Guardian