During an interview to Tagesschau, President of the Czech Republic Petr Pavel revealed the current progress of the so-called Czech "ammunition initiative" launched in February 2024 and supported by 15 other countries, aiming to procure artillery ammunition in 122mm and 155mm calibers for the Armed Forces of Ukraine outside the European Union.
The main takeaways from Pavel's talk with the journalist is that the first batch of 180,000 munitions will be delivered to Ukraine already this June, and there are already contracts for a further "five to six-digit number of shells."
Read more: First Artillery Shells Under Czech Initiative Could Arrive in Ukraine by Late May or Early June
As the Czech President admits, the implementation of the ammunition plan could be proceeding faster but there are challenges, and it's not about the lack of financing. In order to entice more countries to join the initiative as financial donors, Prague had to "reveal its cards" and make this effort public, which Moscow has taken advantage of to prepare countermeasures.
Petr Pavel doesn't specify the exact nature of the russian response to this call but emphasizes that going public about the initiative was necessary because some part of the West is still cautious of "escalating" the conflict. Besides, the more countries join the initiative, the more shells Ukrainian forces will get as a result.
An interesting point voiced by Pavel is that, from the strategic perspective, "we are getting to the point where human resources and support among the Ukrainian population will increasingly be the limiting factors," he said. Therefore, the West must keep increasing the supplies to not let the Kremlin seize more territories and take more lives.
The Head of the Czech Republic is also convinced that russia will not stop this war until it sees that it is able to advance on the battlefield. At the same time, in his opinion, the Western nations should break their main mental block that he articulated as follows:
"russia describes itself as a Euro-Asian civilization. russian values are completely different from ours. Therefore, it would be very naive to approach russia from a position of concession, from a position of trying to reach a mutually beneficial solution. To this day, russia only knows 'win' or 'lose'. In other words, if russia is to succeed, the others must lose. And that should be a warning to us."
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