Zelensky after the meeting with Borrell: the EU will implement the initiative to supply shells to Ukraine by the end of the year

By the end of the year, European partners will implement an initiative to provide Ukraine with a million artillery pieces of ammunition, President Volodymyr Zelenskyi said after meeting with EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell, who is visiting Kyiv.

“I had a meeting today with the head of European diplomacy Borrell. Our relations with the European Union, our interaction. Very important news: by the end of the year, European partners should have time to fully implement the initiative to supply Ukraine with one million shells for our artillery,” Zelenskyy said in his evening address on November 11.

His press service also reported that the key topics of the meeting between the president and the head of EU diplomacy were further interaction between Ukraine and the European Union, increasing military aid, lifting restrictions on strikes on military targets on the territory of Russia, unblocking support within the European Peace Fund and completing all procedures for providing 50 billion dollars to Ukraine in accordance with the G7 decision.

At the same time, the Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal, who also held a meeting with the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell, said that it was about the development of the Ukrainian defense industry. According to him, Ukraine is interested not only in the development of joint production, but also in supporting the Ukrainian defense-industrial complex following the example of Denmark. “When our allies finance the production of weapons in Ukraine for the needs of the Ukrainian Security and Defense Forces,” Shmyhal wrote in a telegram.

In March 2023, the European Union promised to provide Ukraine with one million artillery shells within 12 months.

At the end of January 2024, the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, announced that the countries of the European Union had handed Ukraine only 330,000 shells out of the promised million.

At the beginning of this year, in a letter to the heads of the military departments of the European Union, Defense Minister Rustem Umyerov admitted that Ukraine is experiencing a “critical” shortage of artillery shells. He explained that the Armed Forces can release no more than two thousand shells per day on the front line, which is one and a half thousand kilometers long. This is three times less shells than Russia uses.