The German government will grant 576 million euros to the Czech initiative to jointly purchase ammunition from outside the European Union in order to help Ukraine and compensate for the lack of defense production in the bloc, reported Agence France-Presse and BTA.
With this amount "Germany will finance the purchase of 180,000 ammunition" and will provide "almost 40 percent of the total amount" pledged by the European countries participating in this project, the German defense ministry said today when asked by AFP.
This ammunition should be delivered from June to the front in Ukraine.
For several months, the Czech Republic has been trying to convince other countries to finance a fund to buy ammunition that the EU is unable to produce in sufficient quantities.
In February, Prague said it had identified the presence of 800,000 projectiles in non-EU countries that could be quickly shipped to Ukraine if a group of buyers from the bloc's member states was formed.
At the beginning of March, Germany already announced that it would participate in this initiative with a "three-digit amount". Belgium, Great Britain, Denmark, France, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden are also among the countries that will contribute to this initiative.
For several months now, the Ukrainian forces have been experiencing an acute shortage of ammunition to be able to push back the Russian troops, who are better secured.
Meanwhile, Russia's Defense Ministry said today that the Russian army has recaptured more than 400 sq km of Ukraine's territory since the beginning of the year, amid Russian frontline troops taking over the initiative due to a shortage of ammunition in the Ukrainian army.
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"A total of 403 square kilometers of the territory of the new regions of the Russian Federation have come under our control since the beginning of the year," Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said at a conference.