20 countries of the world will together buy 500 thousand shells for Ukraine

20 countries around the world have joined the Czech Republic’s initiative to jointly purchase additional ammunition for Ukraine. This was stated by Prime Minister of the Czech Republic Petr Fiala. He toldthat enough funds have already been collected to supply Ukraine with 500 thousand artillery shells.

Speaking at the Hudson Institute in Washington, Fiala said countries from Canada and Germany to Poland and the Netherlands are participating in the project, and expressed hope that the initiative will continue to expand and will collect enough to pay for a million more shells for Ukraine. According to him, supplying ammunition to Ukraine should not be a one-time action, but a long-term strategy.

The Czech Prime Minister did not specify exactly how much money has already been collected. However, the Czech Commissioner for the Reconstruction of Ukraine, Tomas Kopecny, said that it was approximately three billion dollars.

Petr Fiala also said that European countries were too accustomed to security and therefore did not invest enough in their defense. After Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the situation changed completely, he said. “Most Western countries are willing to pay. Europe now knows that soft power alone is not enough – we have to resort to hard power, not only for the sake of balance in the world, but also for our own security,” Fiala said.