In Central Europe, Czechs Go Hunting for Arms for Ukraine - by Bojan Pancevski for -The Wallstreet Journal - 17.03.24
- Michael Julien
- Mar 18, 2024
- 3 min read
As the U.S. dithers on aid, Prague is turning to Cold War contacts to supply the ammunition Kyiv needs most.
PRAGUE—Ukraine is about to receive large shipments of the ammunition it needs most. It won’t come from the U.S., or any other pillar of NATO.
Rather, the deal was clinched by a landlocked country of 10 million people sandwiched between Germany and Poland famed for its picturesque capital and the quality of its beer, but which was also home to a large arms industry.
The Czech Republic, once part of a Soviet satellite state and with little sympathy for Russia’s efforts to restore its lost empire, is one of Ukraine’s most ardent supporters. By activating relations dating back to the Cold War, it has sourced around 800,000 artillery shells from a diverse coalition of suppliers spanning the globe and identified another 700,000 that could be secured with extra funds.
The shells include 300,000 Soviet-standard shells and around 500,000 Western-made rounds, to be delivered in batches by the end of the year. More shells will be available as funding comes in, the Czech government said. Altogether, Czech officials say around 3 billion euros, equivalent to $3.3 billion, would secure around 1.5 million shells—a fraction of the $60 billion aid package for Ukraine now stranded in the U.S. congress.
The shipments, which Czech officials say could start reaching Ukraine within weeks, come as shortages of ammunition and troops are forcing Ukraine’s battered army to pull back in places faced with a Russian onslaught.
The Ukrainian forces are so depleted that they now only fire around two shells for every 10 Russia fires at them, according to Western intelligence estimates.
The Ukrainians aren’t running out of courage, but “they are running out of ammunition,” said Jens Stoltenberg, secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
NATO’s failure to provide Ukraine with enough ammunition stems from a lack of political will, alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg said.
Russia, by contrast, having ramped up domestic manufacturing and tapped allies such as North Korea, Iran, and Belarus for supplies, is now both outgunning Ukraine on the battlefield and outproducing NATO.
Some military analysts say Ukraine needs up to 200,000 shells of various calibers each month to push back against the renewed onslaught. The supplies organized by the Czech Republic could help Ukraine’s defenders hold back Russia’s advance while the West slowly ramps up its own weapons production.
“The Czech initiative will help Ukraine stabilize the front and regain the upper hand,” said Nico Lange, former chief of the executive staff at the German defense ministry.
Czech officials behind the discreet procurement plan said their effort started shortly before Russia’s full-scale invasion two years ago and largely circumvented the ponderous bureaucracies of NATO and the European Union.
Unlike the U.S., France or Germany, which mainly focused on ramping up domestic production to supply Ukraine, Czech officials said their initiative focused on sourcing existing materiel. Czech officials began quietly crisscrossing the globe, clinching sales deals and negotiating export licenses from scores of manufacturing nations.
The Czech officials said the country’s past as a Soviet satellite was an unexpected boon. It gifted the country both a substantial armaments industry with global customers and good relations with many nations in the Global South with large stockpiles of Soviet-era weapons and the capacity to produce more.
The officials are coy about where the shells are coming from but say suppliers include some allies of Russia. By contrast, similar entreaties by the U.S. and Western Europeans to potential suppliers in Africa, Asia and Latin America have been rebuffed, according to Western officials.
NATO and EU officials have publicly backed the Czech initiative in recent days. Germany has so far pledged over €500 million, which is by far the largest commitment of all participants, Czech officials said.
The Czech Republic’s approach was to act as a middleman, said Tomas Kopecny, the Czech special envoy for Ukraine who helped negotiate the deal. Prague approached nations it knew to have either manufacturing capacity or compatible ammunition in storage and connected them with a Western country that would place an order and pay for the shipment.
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Laurence Norman, Alistair MacDonald and Dan Michaels contributed to this article.
Write to Bojan Pancevski at bojan.pancevski@wsj.com
From left, Jan Jires, Czech deputy minister of defense, Tomas Pojar, the Czech government’s national security adviser, and Karel Rehka, the head of the Czech Army. Photo: Ondrej Deml/Zuma Press
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