Lithuania’s President explains EU’s lag in delivering million artillery shells to Ukraine

Gitanas Nausėda. Photo: Getty Images

Gitanas Nausėda, President of Lithuania, has listed the reasons for the delay of a million artillery shells that the European Union promised Ukraine.

Source: Nausėda in an interview with LRT, as reported by European Pravda.

Nausėda said that delays in providing Kyiv with the artillery shells promised to the EU are due to insufficient capabilities of the defence industry.

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Quote: “We have to admit that we have not yet reached the volumes that are necessary to continue providing this military support to Ukraine,” Nausėda said.

Speaking about the financial package of EUR 50 billion from the EU to support Kyiv, the Lithuanian president stated that there is political will for its adoption. He expressed hope that a consensus on this issue will be found within a few months.

“The question is whether this money will be enough, because we are talking about a longer period of time, which means [the amount] has also to be divided into years. Then we end up with an average annual amount that will be less than the [EUR] 18 billion granted this year,” Nausėda said.

At the same time, the Lithuanian president emphasised that the countries agreed to return to this issue if Kyiv needed more funds.

Background:

• Gabrielius Landsbergis, Lithuania’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, called on European Union member states to avoid slowing down the supply of ammunition to Ukraine because North Korea has to date given more ammunition to Russia than the EU has to Ukraine.
• The comments of the senior officials of Lithuania appeared after the publication of Bloomberg about the EU lagging the plans to provide Ukraine with a million ammunition shells.
• The media said that the EU has achieved only about 30% of the planned volume of deliveries. Journalists assume they will not have time to deliver the promised million ammunition shells to Ukraine by March 2024.
• Meanwhile, NATO is pushing its member countries to overcome protectionist tendencies and agree on a single standard of artillery ammunition to increase their production.

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