Czech FM: Prague's ammunition initiative may supply 1.

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Czechia's initiative to supply artillery shells for Ukraine may deliver as many as 1.5 million rounds, Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky said in an interview with Bloomberg published on March 26.

In February 2024, Czech President Petr Pavel announced at the Munich Security Conference that Czechia plans to send 800,000 artillery shells to Ukraine. Pavel called on European leaders to also pledge their support and contribute funds to this initiative.

"We can do much more than the initially announced number," Lipavsky told Bloomberg on March 25, saying that the number may be as high as 1.5 million.

A number of countries have already thrown their support behind the initiative, pledging hundreds of millions of dollars. Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said on March 12 that the initiative has already secured the purchase of 300,000 shells and received nonbinding commitments for 200,000 more.

"As we see, it already helps Ukraine to fight better, because they know that they will have a supply of fresh ammunition, which changed their perspective on usage of the current stockpiles," Lipavsky commented.

Ukraine has been facing increasingly severe ammunition shortages in recent months, contributing to the loss of a key front-line city of Avdiivka in February. The EU has delivered 500,000 shells by March , half of the original pledged number, promising to supply the rest by the end of 2024.

The U.S. provided some artillery rounds in its recent $300 million defense package but additional aid remains effectively blocked as a $60 billion aid bill remains stuck in Congress.

According to Bloomberg, NATO allies consider the Czech initiative a stop-gap measure, buying time for Ukraine before further assistance arrives.

While the Czech foreign minister declined to give a timeline for the delivery of the shells, Tomas Pojar, a Czech national security adviser, said earlier that the first batches could be sent to Ukraine as early as June .

Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba noted that the fulfillment of the initiative is designed for a year, but the earliest shell deliveries to the front line "will not take many months."