France will double the number of 155 mm shells delivered to Ukraine, bringing them to 2,000 per month, announced the Minister of the Armed Forces Sébastien Lecornu in an interview with Le Figaro published on Tuesday.
Paris will “deliver ground equipment necessary for Ukraine’s counter-offensive: we are thus doubling the delivery of 155 mm shells to bring it to 2,000 per month from the end of March”, he said. affirmed in a joint interview with the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire.
The 155 mm shells, fired in particular by the French Caesar guns or the German Pzh 2000 and with a range of up to 40 kilometers, are fired every day in industrial quantities by both the Russians and the Ukrainians.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned in February that kyiv was using more munitions than the Alliance could produce, putting Western defense stocks and industries “under pressure”. The European Union has since decided to release two billion euros to supply one million shells to Ukraine.
Defense manufacturers are therefore encouraged to increase their production capacities and reduce their delivery times. Nexter, which produces 155 mm shells in France, plans to produce 150,000 shells per year in 2025, three times more than before the outbreak of the conflict.
President Emmanuel Macron is due to bring together defense industrialists for the first time at the Élysée Palace on Tuesday to take stock of the transition to this “war economy”, which he calls for.
According to Sébastien Lecornu, Paris will also “very soon” supply the SAMP/T surface-to-air defense system promised to Ukraine, which “represents a value of several hundred million euros”.
“And we are studying, with (Prime Minister) Élisabeth Borne, the replenishment of the support fund for Ukraine wanted by the presidential majority in the National Assembly, of which the 200 million have been fully allocated”, he said. added. Ukraine was able to use this fund to buy equipment from French manufacturers.
Consult our file: War in Ukraine