Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has called on Kiev’s Western patrons to ramp up their search for artillery shells in third countries as NATO’s own supplies come dangerously close to running out.
“How we can survive this period of shell starvation, which we have found ourselves in due to the fact that our partners did not begin to increase their production in time – this is what we, the Ministry of Defense, the special services, and the president are now doing,” Kuleba said in an interview with Ukrainian television on Monday.
“There is a solution on where to get the shells. Today, this is in third countries. Our partners must buy shells in third countries and transfer them to Ukraine,” Kuleba said.
The foreign minister went on to demand that Western countries halt their exports of ammunition to any other countries besides Ukraine, promising that Kiev would somehow “compensate” potential losses in profits “until the military-defense industry reaches full capacity.”
The Ukrainian top diplomat’s comments come less than 48 hours after his appearance on CNN to warn that the Ukrainian military was "suffering a severe shortage of artillery shells and other types of weapons."
Other Ukrainian officials have said publicly as well as anonymously in interviews with local and Western media that the drop-off in NATO arms aid has forced Ukrainian troops to start using ammunition as sparingly as possible, dramatically reducing the number of attacks against Russian forces.
US lawmakers opposed to continued arms aid to Ukraine amid a growing fiscal and border crisis at home have sounded the alarm about NATO’s seeming inability to match the capabilities of the Russian military-industrial base.
In comments to media last week, Republican Senator J.D. Vance estimated that the US had “expended decades’ worth of supplies of American weapons” in Ukraine over the past two years, and complained that the destruction of the US manufacturing base in recent decades has dramatically reduced the country’s ability to make weaponry in large quantities.
“It is absurd for the US to devote so many resources, so much attention, and so much time to a border conflict six thousand miles away while our own US southern border is wide open,” Vance, an outspoken critic of Ukraine aid in the Senate, added.
A $61 billion aid package for Ukraine proposed by the Biden administration last November has been stuck in Congress for months, with House Republicans vowing not to vote for any further assistance to foreign countries until the US border crisis is addressed. Former president and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has proposed turning all future aid into loans that must be paid back, with the idea gaining support from the MAGA wing of the party and even some conventional, hawkish Republicans, such as neoconservative South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham.
The logjam in Washington over aid has prompted the US to put pressure on its European NATO allies to ramp up their own economic and military support for Ukraine, with major European powers including France and Germany dutifully agreeing to do so, even as their economies continue to suffer the consequences resulting from the loss of cheap Russian energy amid the proxy war in Ukraine.
Officials from European NATO countries told The New York Times in November that Russia was able to produce up to seven times more ammunition than the US and Europe combined, confirming a prediction by President Putin last March that no amount of NATO weapons for Ukraine would be enough to outgun Russia.
“We are concerned about [NATO weapons deliveries] from the perspective that this is an attempt to prolong the conflict,” Putin said at the time. “From the point of view of the logic of those who provoked this conflict and are trying to preserve it at any cost, [arms deliveries] are probably the right decision. But in my opinion, this will only lead to a greater tragedy.”