Latvian president: EU should prioritize ammunition procurement for Ukraine over other countries

Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics said that the EU should hold off selling ammunition to third countries, prioritizing procurement for Ukraine.

"If we can push back their procurements – because they don't have active hostilities – that's what we should do," he said in an interview with Suspilne media outlet, published on Nov. 26.

According to Rinkevics, to make that happen, European institutions must work with countries outside of the EU. He said he wasn't for imposing any limitations except on friends and allies of Russia.  

Bloomberg reported on Nov. 10, citing undisclosed sources, that the EU believes it is unlikely to deliver all of the pledged 1 million artillery shells to Ukraine by the March 2024 target.

Bloomberg reported earlier in October that with more than half of the allocated time gone, the EU has delivered only 30% of planned supplies and risks missing its target.  

Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba blamed the delay on the "sad state of the military industry" in EU countries.

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Editor’s Note: This story is based on an investigation by Trap Aggressor, a project by Ukrainian NGO StateWatch, that advocates for principles of good governance. The investigation’s author, Roman Steblivskyi, is a researcher at StateWatch. This story has been translated from Ukrainian and edited by…

The Kyiv IndependentRoman Steblivskyi