The chief of Chinese diplomacy, Wang Yi, announced that his country would propose a peace plan for Ukraine on the occasion of the first anniversary of the conflict on February 24.
by Sylvie Kauffmann (Munich, Germany, Special Envoy) and Thomas Wieder (Munich, Germany, Special Envoy)
The pressing calls of the Ukrainian leaders launched to Europeans so that they accelerate their military aid seem to have been heard at least on one point: that of ammunition, whose level of stocks is dangerously low in armies that high intensity.
NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, had drawn the alarm signal on February 9, declaring that the rhythm of consumption of ammunition by kyiv was higher than that of NATO production. The urgency of the situation, at a time when the Ukrainian army faces a critical phase on the front against the Russian forces, led to political leaders and responsible for the defense industries to discuss the means to quickly relaunch the production of the ammunition , during the Munich on security conference, which was held from Friday 17 to Sunday 19 February in the Bavarian capital.
Sunday, the head of European diplomacy, the high representative Josep Borrell, became more alarmist than Mr. Stoltenberg. “We are in the urgency of the war,” he said. “We have been too late in making decisions about the matter of tanks. We must quickly resolve this ammunition shortage, this is a question of weeks.”
Use European funds 2>
The European Commission therefore works on the idea of using European funds to allow companies in the defense industry to “standardize” their production of ammunition. Its president, Ursula von der Leyen, took the example of community aid for the production of vaccines during the Cavid-19 pandemic, which she wishes to apply to ammunition. “It is not possible that we had to wait for months and years before being able to restock ourselves,” she said on Saturday in Munich.
There is an instrument for this, explained Mr. Borrell, that of the ease of European peace, which has allowed since the start of the war in Ukraine to finance the deliveries of arms to Kiev by the member states of the European Union (EU). A system of preliminary agreements on the ammunition orders addressed by the EU to defense manufacturers would thus accelerate their large -scale production.
m. Borrell has planned to submit this plan to the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Twenty-seven on Monday in Brussels. In the short term, he wants to convince EU member states to provide Ukraine with the ammunition available in their own stocks. For the Estonian Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas, who has been campaigning for this idea for two weeks, the slowness of the States to launch orders for ammunition is explained by the illusion that “some maintain that this conflict will not last”.
You have 58.73% of this article to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.