French President Emmanuel Macron threw his support behind a Czech plan to deliver hundreds of thousands of artillery shells to Ukraine from countries outside the European Union to help it force back Russian advances,
Bloomberg reports.
France will take part in the initiative, Macron said, without offering financial details, adding that the EU’s European Peace Facility could also be tapped in part to fund it. A French official had previously said such mechanisms would not be used.
“The Czech initiative is extremely useful, we support it, we’ll participate in it,” Macron said in Prague Tuesday alongside Czech President Petr Pavel. “It consists of looking for ammunition everywhere it is available and is compatible with the equipment we’ve delivered.”
Macron has insisted on focusing the EU’s efforts on bolstering Europe’s defense industry rather than diverting funds for off-the-shelf material from outside the bloc. But dwindling ammunition stocks and stalled funding from the US have put Ukrainian forces on the back foot, raising worries that Russian troops may make significant advances by summer.
The Czech president said last month that Prague had identified some 800,000 rounds of ammunition that could be bought from non-EU countries and delivered within weeks if money were made available. Days later, Macron hosted leaders in Paris to discuss support for Ukraine, including the Czech proposal. The Netherlands agreed to contribute €100 million ($108 million).
The initiative is a backstop as the EU has fallen well short of a pledge to provide Ukraine with 1 million rounds of artillery by this month. Russia is producing far more and benefiting from ammunition deliveries from North Korea.
Addressing how to pay for the plan, Macron said: “It can be a bilateral mobilization, it can be cooperations with third parties, bilateral financing, just as it can be European financing, that of the European Peace Facility, which can be mobilized in part for this initiative.”
