Traveling to Paris, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday that it was “absolutely essential” to send more weapons to Ukraine.
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While many defense experts agree that Ukraine remains vastly outmatched by Russia on the battlefield, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that he is “absolutely essential” to send more weapons to Ukraine. Joe Biden’s representative made the remark during a visit to a weapons factory in Versailles with French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu.
Since the defeat in the battle of Avdiivka in the east of the country, persistent reports indicate that Ukrainian troops ration or lack ammunition on the front lines. Troops complain of running out of ammunition as they have faced a constant barrage of Russian airstrikes.
To remedy this lack of ammunition, around twenty countries recently joined the Czech initiative to purchase ammunition for Ukraine. Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said on Wednesday during his visit to Lithuania that several hundred thousand rounds of ammunition resulting from this initiative could be delivered to Ukraine as early as June. Germany alone will provide 180,000 artillery shells.
During a visit to the arms manufacturer Nexter, which notably produces the Caesar cannon, the French Minister of the Armed Forces stressed on Tuesday that “this Caesar cannon [était] became the symbol of this artillery coalitionwith a significant increase in production capacities: two per month, now six per month and […] we will increase production up to 12 guns per month in the coming times,” explained Sébastien Lecornu.
As Russian troops launched a rocket attack on the town of Dnipro on Tuesday, injuring 13 people, Vladimir Putin said more than 3.2 million people received a Russian passport in the Ukrainian regions controlled by Russia (Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson).