Some important numbers here
Pyongyang beats the EU in supplying shells to the guns in Ukraine.
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North Korea sends Putin tons of ammo. Europe can’t do the same for Ukraine
Pyongyang beats the EU in supplying shells to the guns in Ukraine.
Russia's President Vladimir Putin and North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un | Pool photo by Mikhail Metzel via AFP/Getty Images
In the race to arm allies, North Korea has beaten the EU to a million artillery shells.
Despite
pledging to support Ukraine with a million rounds of ammunition within a year to help it beat back Russia’s invasion, the EU’s weapons manufacturers are nowhere near the kind of output needed to hit that target by March.
"I'm also very worried about the production of ammunition," Estonia's Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, who first proposed the target, said on the sidelines of last week's EU leaders summit. "The promise that we have given to Ukraine to deliver 1 million artillery rounds ... this is behind."
Meanwhile, North Korea is shipping vast amounts of ammunition to Russia; a South Korean lawmaker reckons Pyongyang has
already sent a million shells. South Korea's National Intelligence Service told lawmakers at a closed-door parliamentary audit on Wednesday that North Korea had made at least 10 arms transfers to Russia since August.
The EU on Friday condemned reports of shipments from North Korea to Russia.
“North Korea runs a war economy which we don’t,” said Trevor Taylor from the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI) in London. “But whether the ammunition they are supplying is at the standard of reliability and safety that the Europeans would adhere to is another question.”
The European Commission has delivered 223,800 artillery shells to Ukraine since May 31 under a reimbursement scheme for countries that agreed to dispatch their inventories to Kyiv.
Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis
tweeted recently that deliveries from EU countries are at around 300,000.
The ramp-up to significantly boost supply is happening very slowly.
Last month, France’s Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu
said France would be able to send, as of 2024,
some 3,000 rounds of critical 155 millimeter ammunition to Kyiv each month — up from 1,000 currently — due to defense contractors like Nexter and Eurenco upping production.
However, that would still amount to only
36,000 rounds a year from
France.
An
official tabulation of
German military aid to Ukraine also paints a dire picture:
27,500 155mm rounds planned or in execution for delivery, and fewer than 19,000 155mm explosive shells as well as an unspecified (but almost certainly significantly smaller) amount of 155mm precision-guided ammunition already delivered — just a fraction of what Ukraine needs every month.
“The 1-million-round ammunition target remains an important political goal,” said Peter Stano, a spokesperson for the Commission, adding that ministers would have a chance to return to the goal at a meeting in Brussels on November 14.
The European Commission has delivered 223,800 artillery shells to Ukraine since May 31 | Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images
One promising signal is that seven EU countries have
ordered ammunition through the European Defence Agency’s (EDA) new fast-track joint procurement program.
“Industry will always tell you it’s never enough, but money is coming in,” said Lucie Béraud-Sudreau from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. “We’re always facing the time lag issue. Governments need to make budgets and then there’s another year until contracts are issued.”
Ukraine blasts Russia
Despite the lagging deliveries, Ukraine has for the first time pulled ahead of Russia in how many shells it's firing per day.
At the start of the invasion, Moscow’s army was firing 63,000 shells a day at Ukrainian forces compared to just 4,000 coming the other way. But as of October, the tables have turned, with Ukraine launching 9,000 per day against Russia’s 7,000, the Ukrainian armed forces said.
The North Korea deliveries could help Moscow regain the upper hand, adding to its own prodigious production.
“The
Russians still carry first place in the world in the production of shells per month –
125,000,” said Petro Chernyk, a Ukrainian military analyst, adding that the United States will only ramp up to 80,000 per month by 2025.
Ukraine's allies are trying to add new production. Ukraine’s minister of strategic industries, Oleksandr Kamyshin,
admitted in an interview with POLITICO that harnessing all existing global capacity would be “not enough” to keep Kyiv’s forces supplied with ammunition.
German defense giant Rheinmetall
bought Expal Systems, a Spanish ammunition and armament manufacturer, in August. The purchase was aimed at boosting Rheinmetall’s munitions output — in particular of mortar and artillery shells and propellant.
In October, the company announced two orders for artillery ammunition:
one for “tens of thousands” of 155mm rounds earmarked for Ukraine,
another for over 150,000 155mm artillery shells, manufactured by Expal.
But only some tens of thousands will make their way to Ukraine by the end of this year, according to Rheinmetall, with the rest slated for arrival next year.
Ukraine has also signed a
deal with Poland's PGZ to manufacture 125mm shells for tanks in Poland.
In response, Kyiv is looking to produce more ammunition at home.
In September, Germany’s Federal Cartel Office
gave the go-ahead to a joint venture between Rheinmetall and state-owned Ukrainian Defense Industry.
One reason the million-rounds target is so far from being hit is that EU countries — at the insistence of Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, Germany and France — wouldn't agree to include ammunition produced outside the EU.
If they can't access non-EU factories, defense executives say they need long-term contracts to justify investment in new manufacturing lines.
Fighting old wars
The failure to respond to the Ukraine war with a rapid production surge is due in part to a security architecture dating back to the Cold War.
Western military planners imagined that a war with the USSR would last just weeks before nuclear weapons were deployed, meaning there was no expectation of the kind of prolonged World War I-style grind now seen in Ukraine.
When Western powers did go to war, they also fought very different conflicts than what's now happening in Ukraine. The U.K. military action in Northern Ireland, French interventions in Western Africa, or the U.S.-backed invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq bear little resemblance to the artillery-heavy Russia-Ukraine war.
The U.K. military action in Northern Ireland, French interventions in Western Africa, or the U.S.-backed invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq bear little resemblance to the artillery-heavy Russia-Ukraine war | Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images
With downward pressure on defense spending prevalent across NATO’s European members, and ministries cautious of the costs associated with maintaining warehouses full of shells that need to be regularly replaced, spending on munitions tumbled, said Taylor from RUSI.
To make matters worse, many Western armies run on different weapons systems, increasing costs. The EDA’s joint procurement program applies to four 155mm firing platforms — France’s Caesar, Poland’s Krab, Germany’s Panzerhaubitze 2000 and Slovakia’s Zuzana.
The head of NATO’s military committee, Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, wants countries to consolidate technology, telling
Reuters that the cost of making a simple artillery shell has gone from €2,000 before Russia’s attack on Ukraine to €8,000 today as demand booms.
Bauer said there are at least 14 different kinds of 155mm ammunition, and as countries ramp up defense spending it makes sense to standardize design.
All of this comes on top of the headaches posed by training staff, funding new factories and red tape.
“There are too many people, perhaps in governments if not in ministries of defense, who think you can boost weapons production like you can boost bicycle production,” said Taylor. “That’s just not the case.”
Veronika Melkozerova reported from Kyiv.