Borrell Urges EU To Beef Up Defense Industry For Potential Threats, Keep Aiding Ukraine

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has urged the bloc to strengthen its defense industry and replenish its stockpiles in order to be ready to face “potential threats” while continuing to provide military aid to Ukraine.

Ukraine, which relies heavily on Western and especially U.S. supplies of military equipment, has been forced to ration its ammunition stocks in the face of an increasingly intense assault by Russia.

“After two years of high-intensity war, available supplies have been depleted and the conflict has shifted from a war of supplies to a war of production,” Borrell wrote in an article on March 11 on the European Defense Industrial Strategy that was presented to the European Commission on March 5.

As a critical $60 billion military aid package remains blocked in the U.S. House of Representatives due to Republican opposition, Ukraine has become more dependent on supplies from European allies.

Borrell said the EU needs to urgently overcome the current fragmentation of its defense industry and become “defense ready” through more joint procurement and more common defense projects.

While consolidating its own defense capabilities and increase production, the EU “could use the windfall profits of Russian frozen assets to purchase arms for Ukraine and/or help strengthen its defense industry,” Borrell wrote.

“So far, we have considered using these profits to support the reconstruction of Ukraine. However, currently, the main issue in Ukraine is not so much reconstruction, but rather avoiding further destruction,” he wrote.

Borrell’s comments came as CNN, quoting an unnamed senior European intelligence official, reported on March 11 that Russia was churning out three times more artillery ammunition that the United States and the EU put together.

“What we are in now is a production war,” the senior NATO official told CNN.

Russia is currently producing 250,000 artillery shells monthly, or about 3 million annually, the source told CNN, adding that the United States and Europe together have the capacity to send Ukraine some 1.2 million shells per year.

While beefing up its own production capabilities, Russia has also been reportedly importing massive quantities of artillery ammunition from North Korea and Iran.

In late January, Borrell acknowledged that the EU would fall far short of its previously set target of sending 1 million artillery shells to Ukraine by March, saying that about half was delivered by that deadline and that the rest would be sent by the end of the year.

In an interview with RFE/RL last month on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, Borrell said, “We have to do more, I know. It is never enough when you fight on war. It is never enough.”/REL/