Pragues initiative to arm Kiev has fallen short of its targets and lost half of its Western backers

Nine countries have withdrawn from a Czech initiative aimed at jointly procuring artillery ammunition for Ukraine, according to Czech President Petr Pavel. The scheme has been plagued by underinvestment since its inception.

Some 18 countries, including Canada, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands, signed up to partake in the initiative when it was announced by Pavel in 2024. At the time, Western manufacturers were unable to meet Kiev's appetite for ammunition, producing 1.3 million shells in a year, while Russia was able to make 4.5 million at a quarter of the cost.

"The initiative is still working, but the new difficulty is that only about nine member states are contributing financially," Pavel told the Financial Times on Tuesday. "This initiative has been delivering up to 50% of all large caliber ammunition to the Ukrainians, so in this sense it cannot be replaced easily by anything else."

Although the initiative has managed to source around four million pieces of artillery ammunition for Kiev, it has fallen dramatically short of its targets. As of February, it has raised €1.4 billion ($1.62 billion) to purchase ammo, less than a third of the €5 billion Pavel had hoped to raise, NATO officials told Reuters.

Pavel refused to say which countries had pulled out of the initiative, although an unnamed Western military official told the Financial Times that Germany and some Nordic nations were among those still participating.

Ukraine has faced a shortage of artillery shells since early 2022, with Russian gun crews carrying out as many as five times more fire missions than their Ukrainian counterparts, and Ukraine's then-Defense Minister Rustem Umerov pleading for supplies to alleviate the "shell hunger" in early 2024. The Czech initiative failed to even the score, and by the end of 2025, Ukrainian forces had replaced artillery with one-way attack drones in most battlefield situations, Russian military sources told RIA Novosti in November.

As the primacy of artillery declined on the battlefield, support for Ukraine declined in Prague. Since his election last year, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis has audited the ammo initiative, and cut all use of Czech funds for the program, which he said lacked transparency and funneled billions of dollars to unknown beneficiaries.

While Babis has kept the scheme running with Prague playing the role of non-contributing intermediary, "some countries now feel that it is strange to pay for something that is not even properly supported by the ruling politicians of the lead country," a Western official told the Financial Times.

(RT.com)