Ukraine has received only 30% of the million shells promised to the EU last year, Volodymyr Zelenskyi said on Monday, as the Kyiv army fights on the front lines and suffers from a shortage of ammunition, AFP reports.

“Unfortunately, not 50%, but 30%, of the million shells promised to us by the European Union have been delivered,” said the President of Ukraine at a press conference in Kyiv with Bulgarian Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov.

Last year, the EU pledged to send one million artillery shells to Ukraine, which is fighting a Russian invasion two years ago, by the end of March 2024, before admitting it could not meet the target.

At the end of January, the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, said that about 52 percent of the promised shells would be delivered by March. In general, according to Borrell, the Europeans will be able to supply Kyiv with 1.15 million shells by the end of 2024.

In recent days, Ukrainian officials have complained about delays in the delivery of Western military aid, which forced the Kyiv army to withdraw from Avdiyivka after four months of fighting.

On Monday, Kyiv also announced it had abandoned a small village near Avdiivka in the face of relentless Russian pressure.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov also said on Sunday that half of the western weapons promised to Kyiv were delivered late.

“Currently, commitments are not synonymous with implementation, and 50% of (these) commitments are not fulfilled on time,” he said. Because of these delays, “we are losing people, we are losing territories,” the minister added.

Last week, President Zelenskyi said that delays in arms deliveries contributed to the failure of Kyiv’s major counteroffensive in the summer of 2023.

“Last year we had a lot of very good things, a lot of very important things on the counter-offensive, but not all of them made it,” he explained on Friday.