International Czech minister: Ammunition for Ukraine to arrive in June

The first delivery from an initiative coordinated by the Czech Republic for ammunition deliveries to Ukraine from third countries should take place by the end of June at the latest. Czech Defense Minister Jana Cernochova said this on Sunday in a discussion on the Czech TV channel CNN Prima News. However, for tactical reasons, she could not say a more precise date or whether some of the ammunition was already in Ukraine.

The aim of the Czech initiative is to collect money from allied countries in order to jointly purchase up to 800,000 artillery shells for Kiev from countries outside the EU. As the minister said on the TV program, the Czech Republic has now signed agreements with 18 countries to finance the ammunition initiative. According to the CTK news agency, Prime Minister Petr Fiala announced at the end of May that 1.6 billion euros had already been raised. Cernochova initially did not want to specify how much the Czech Republic itself had contributed so far.

The minister said that the countries from which the ammunition had been purchased would not be revealed in the future either. This is because these are countries that do not want to take sides in the Ukraine conflict, she explained.

In neighbouring Slovakia, pro-Ukrainian non-governmental organizations initiated their own collection in protest against the fact that the government in Bratislava did not want to join the Czech ammunition initiative. As the initiators inform on their homepage, more than 4.3 million euros in private donations have already been collected in Slovakia in this way. This is more than some countries participating in the initiative have contributed in state funds.