The war with Ukraine will end if the EU does not find a way to speed up the supply of ammunition to Ukraine within weeks, warned Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, on the last day of the Munich Security Conference, The Guardian reports. .

He said a special meeting of EU defense ministers scheduled for March 8-9 would give countries the chance to secure ammunition from their existing stocks, adding that European militaries need up to 10 months to order and receive a single bullet.

“We are in emergency war mode,” he said. “This ammunition shortage needs to be resolved quickly; it’s a matter of weeks.” He said that if this did not happen, the war would be over.

Borrell will present plans at a meeting of EU foreign ministers on Monday to use the existing 3.6 billion euro European Peace Fund to jointly buy ammunition, similar to the procurement of vaccines during the Covid crisis, an idea first floated by Estonia’s prime minister. Kaya Callas.

This idea was picked up on Saturday by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.

• “As always in this brutal war that Russia has unleashed against Ukraine, we see that we can move mountains under pressure, and so now,” she said in an interview with Reuters and other media at the Munich Security Conference.
• “These are not ordinary times, these are extraordinary times. And therefore we must also look at extraordinary measures or procedures,” she added, speaking of the EU’s intention to jointly purchase weapons for Ukraine.

The urgency of the ammunition shortage requires the EU to resort to existing stocks

Borrell said Estonia’s idea would work in the medium term, but he believed the urgency of the deficit was such that it required EU countries to use existing reserves.

• “We have to use what the member states have,” he said.
• “We need to do much more and much faster. There is much more to come. We must increase and accelerate our military support. It currently takes European militaries nearly 10 months to acquire a 155 mm bullet, nearly a year, and nearly three years to acquire an air-to-air missile. It does not correspond to the war situation in which we live.”

Callas, speaking at the same event, said Russia was in war mode, producing munitions in three shifts, adding that a similar war stance should be in place in Europe. She claimed defense industry executives told her they had no orders from the EU.

Borrell said the lack of ammunition was because “we forgot about classical warfare – we only engaged with expeditionary forces and technological blitzkrieg.”

Borrell calls for increased interoperability in the EU

Some European countries, such as Poland, have doubled their defense budgets, he said, while France is increasing its defense spending by 40 percent, from €39 billion to €59 billion.

He stressed that defense remained a national state competence in the EU, but said that if the EU increased defense spending “everyone in their own corner, we will increase our duplications, not fill our gaps”.

Borrell said the war in Ukraine could serve as a wake-up call or an incentive to break the taboo by increasing defense interoperability in Europe, but added that experience shows that this will not change overnight and bemoaned a culture of procrastination that he said was weakening the coordination the role of the European Defense Agency

“It took us too long to make important decisions like providing battle tanks,” he said, “when everyone knows that to win a classic war, a classic war with heavy weapons maneuvers, you need battle tanks. You will not win this war without these weapons.”

• “If Europe went to war against Russia, some countries would run out of ammunition in a few days.” The war depleted the reserves of many states

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said this week that Ukraine is using artillery shells faster than allies can now produce them.

According to him, NATO plans to increase the stockpile of weapons and ammunition, Stoltenberg emphasized that it is necessary to produce more ammunition, including so that the allied countries replenish their depleted stocks to support Ukraine.

• “The war in Ukraine consumes a huge amount of ammunition.
• This is putting pressure on our defense industry, so we need to ramp up production and invest in our production capacity.”

“If Europe fought against Russia, some countries would run out of ammunition in a few days”

But the pace of ammunition shipments to Ukraine, where Kyiv forces use up to 10,000 rounds a day, has depleted Western stockpiles and exposed problems in supply chains that are not fast enough, efficient and understaffed.

• “If Europe were to fight Russia, some countries would run out of ammunition in a few days,” a European diplomat told Reuters.

Production problems

The war also drew attention to the lack of industrial capacity needed to rapidly ramp up production, after many production lines had disappeared in recent decades due to reduced orders from governments.

The United States and France began pressuring defense companies to increase production. Washington aims to increase its monthly production of artillery shells from 14,400 before the war to 90,000, according to the New York Times.

According to the State Department and the Pentagon, the United States – Ukraine’s largest military supplier – has sent Kiev about $30 billion worth of weapons since the war began, including more than a million 155mm rounds.