KYIV (Reuters) – The European union has delivered about 300,000 of its promised million shells to Ukraine so far, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Wednesday while attending a NATO meeting in Brussels.
Speaking to reporters on the event’s sidelines, Kuleba called for greater alignment of Ukraine’s and NATO’s defence industries to ensure Kyiv has the supplies it needs to defeat Russia, which invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
“We need to create a Euro-Atlantic common area of defence industries,” Kuleba said, adding this would ensure both Ukraine’s security and that of NATO countries themselves.
Kyiv has for the last several months engaged in a concerted drive to entice leading global arms manufacturers to set up operations in Ukraine, part of a bid to diversify its reliance on weapons and ammunition given by its allies.
Kuleba rejected a journalist’s assertion that the war was now at a stalemate, after Ukraine’s summer counter-offensive failed to win back significant amounts of territory occupied by Russia.
“There is no stalemate,” he said before moving on to another question.
Kuleba also said he had a “productive” meeting on Tuesday with Slovak Foreign Minister Juraj Blanar.
Slovakia’s newly-elected President, Robert Fico, promised to halt military aid to Ukraine, although later clarified that he would not block arms purchases from private companies.
“He reiterated that the maintenance hub for Ukrainian heavy equipment will continue to function in Slovakia. Contracts between Ukrainian and Slovak companies producing weapons will continue,” Kuleba said.
(Reporting by Max Hunder; Editing by Alex Richardson and Tomasz Janowski)
