Ukraine received only 30% of the million artillery shells promised by the EU last year, Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday, at a time when Kiev’s army is struggling on the front and suffering lack of ammunition.
52% of promised shells would be delivered by March
“Out of a million shells that the European Union promised us, it was not 50% but unfortunately 30% that were delivered,” declared the Ukrainian president during a press conference in Kiev with the Prime Minister. Bulgarian Minister Nikolai Denkov. The EU committed last year to sending Ukraine, which has been fighting for two years against the Russian invasion, one million artillery shells before the end of March 2024, before admitting that it could not reach this goal.
At the end of January, the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, declared that around 52% of the promised shells would be delivered by March. In total, according to Josep Borrell, the Europeans will be able to supply Kiev with 1.15 million shells before the end of 2024. Ukrainian officials have deplored in recent days delays in deliveries of Western military aid, which have notably forced the Kiev army to withdraw from the fortress city of Avdiïvka (east) after four months of fighting.
On Monday, kyiv also announced that it had abandoned a small village near Avdiïvka, in the face of incessant pressure from Russia. Ukrainian Defense Minister Roustem Oumerov also declared on Sunday that half of the Western weapons promised to kyiv were delivered late. “Currently, a commitment is not synonymous with delivery, 50% of (these) commitments are not delivered on time,” he said. Because of these delays, “we are losing people, we are losing territories,” added the minister.
President Zelensky estimated last week that delays in arms deliveries had contributed to the failure of Kiev’s major counter-offensive in the summer of 2023. “Last year, during the counter-offensive, we “We had a lot of very useful things, a lot of very important things, but not all of them arrived on time,” he explained on Friday.