Ukraine to get jets from Belgium, as Zelenskyy turns to bilateral deals to support war | DW News

Ukraine to get jets from Belgium, as Zelenskyy turns to bilateral deals to support war | DW News

Ukraine’s president vadir zalinski was in Lisbon and Brussels today on his tour of European States aimed at boosting support for the war effort against Russia the good news for Ukraine is that he was able to make the trip at all this is a visit forced to take place later than planned because of Russian offensives in Ukraine which have left Defenders seeding territory among other reasons because it has been running short of weapons that’s what this visit is meant to change at least to some degree seninsky visited a Belgian military Airbase today the government in Brussels has agreed to provide 30 us made F-16 fighter jets over the next four years the Belgian government has also pledged 1 billion euros in military aid and that matches a pledge by the Spanish government made on Monday here’s zinsky speaking in Brussels today right now when Russia is trying to expand and prolong the war we need more concrete steps to bring peace closer first of all we have a clear commitment to the supply of combat aircraft to Ukraine thank you for this decision the agreement we have with Belgium is for the supply of 30 F-16 aircraft our task is to make sure that we can start using the first f-16s in Ukraine this year and make our position stronger Terry Schultz joins us now from Brussels Terry Ukraine has been asking for f-16s for a really long time now how beneficial is this contribution now more than two years into the war and spaced out over four years that’s right Nicole this was one of those Advanced weapons in fact that president zilinski was told he would never get so in that sense it’s still a success even more than two years into the war but in that time of course Russia has made a lot of advances a lot of ukrainians have been killed and Military analysts have always said the F-16 doesn’t solve everything yes it gives Ukraine a more powerful Air Force it can help them contest the airspace over Ukraine but here’s another uh another hangup that comes with this contribution by the belgians they’ve been said that they say that it can only be used in Ukrainian territory so there won’t be any uh use of these f-16s going into Russia to try to destroy assets on that side of the Border president zalinski uh over these past couple of days has signed security agreements with Belgium with Spain and most recently with Portugal individually that is wouldn’t it be far more beneficial and efficient maybe to just negotiate with the entire EU with the entire block well that would make sense of course if all 27 countries would agree to support Ukraine to the extent that these uh bilateral agreements have done for example the Belgian one is 10 years and it gives Ukraine increasing Military Support financial support training exercises things like this but in the EU that would mean that all 27 have to come to the same decision and uh once again as we’ve seen so many times in the past when it comes to Ukraine Hungary has refused to support allowing the European Union to even use some money that’s already been earmarked for Ukraine it says it will not allow more weapons to be shipped to Ukraine and that anybody who wants to help Ukraine simply wants War over Peace So Hungary is really a sticking point in the EU acting as a whole now I should point out that should Ukraine become a member which is of course what it wants to do and what the EU has promised it there will be some security guarantees uh that go along with that but certainly there’s no way that they can get a blanket guarantee from the EU as things stand now there was in Brussels today a meeting of EU defense ministers was there any signal that Hungary might be willing to lift its blockade on Ukrainian assistance on the contrary actually I asked ministers coming out of the meeting if there had been any sign of this and they basically had to say no there are some side initiatives like a proposal Poland has made uh for a new border initiative that Hungary may be willing to support kind of Peace meal but on these big budget matters they didn’t show any sign of relenting yet and that’s really disappointing for Ukraine and disappointing for all the EU countries who really want to increase their support for that country you mentioned it there there are countries that want to increase their support and they are finding ways to help Ukraine without the need for unanimous decisions one of those countries or one of those is a cckl initiative aimed at sourcing artillery shells from all over the world we’ll be right back with you Terry but first here’s Czech prime minister Peter fella in prag today cha continues to develop the ammunition initiative in coordination with International Partners 15 EU and NATO countries already contributed over 1.6 billion EUR our efforts will soon improve Ukraine’s defense as I promised the first t of, 55 mimet ammunition will be delivered in June Ukraine can expect the first shipment within the next days that should be music to zelinsky’s ears Terry what can you tell us about this initiative that’s right Nicole as we’ve been speaking about so many times ammunition is really one of the the items that you know is is meaning life or death for Ukrainian soldiers some of the Retreats that we’ve had to see Ukrainian troops make have been because they R have been running out of ammunition so this check initiative which only became public in February even though it had been underway since before the War Began has really been a bright spot and it’s really shown how a relatively small country like czechia can make a big difference when it wants to let me show you how that was done shell hunger that’s what it’s called when troops lack ammunition but Ukrainian soldiers are already suffering shell starvation a factor in recent Retreats they’ve been forced to make the ukrainians are not running out of Courage they are running out of ammunition a pledge made last year by the European Union to provide Ukraine a million rounds of ammunition by this March only managed to send half that amount by the self-imposed deadline meanwhile however another plan was gathering steam far from Brussels and the headlines underwe even before moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 the so-called Czech initiative had been quietly arranging weapons deliveries to Ukraine that had been purchased on the global glob Market we were gathering uh different types of weapons on a large Excel sheet and we were preparing for the possibility that somebody would actually buy it from the list and we would be able to deliver it to Ukraine ASP the program’s coordinator Thomas ketne says their focus turned to ammunition when European production didn’t scale up as quickly as hoped we just came in we said Okay so this wasn’t able to to be done by by the EU institutions or the plan um so so let’s try this the robust Czech weapons industry identified ammunition stockpiles all over the world some in countries that would not sell directly to Ukraine for political reasons David Hots is CEO of STV one of the Czech manufacturers helping facilitate the purchases through Prague we as a company as well as other other companies within the Cher Valley we have large uh network of uh suppliers and producers around the world uh so we just activate our contacts and uh make things happen Denmark and the Netherlands were the first other countries to invest in the Czech plan while it was under the radar the Czech government went public with it earlier this year we can already buy approximately 500,000 rounds of large caliber ammunition Czech citizens have raised 70 million euros for the program through crowdfunding and even next door in Slovakia where the government cut off support for Ukraine a similar effort collected 4 million euros now at least 20 governments have signed on to the initiative with Germany spending the most Thomas Kopi says while his country is proud of this help for Ukraine the real goal would be to see it get too big to be handled in Prague we will gladly hand over the system of how we do things I mean we will be happy uh of this not being labeled the check initiative anymore the first deliveries should reach Ukraine next month and Czech officials believe well over a million rounds can be sourced this way over the next year if ke’s allies are serious about preventing a shell famine on the front line and our correspondent Terry Schulz who could be seen in that report doing some heavy lifting is still with us Terry this is a remarkable initiative and as we heard from the cck Prime Minister earlier the first shells are set to arrive within days so has this initiative been able to move more quickly because it wasn’t dragged down by EU bureaucracy that’s certainly one of the reasons and the checks you know they didn’t ask anybody what they thought they didn’t wait around to get uh a lot of other countries in support when they started this initiative they just started calling around the Czech uh weapons manufacturers to people they knew to companies they knew and they said hey have you got any shells lying around that we could perhaps buy and you know it was just a very practical effort so uh the prime minister fial is very justifiably proud of it uh they were able to do this basically starting on their own and then other countries joined in quite quickly and wanted to buy these items because they saw that Ukraine needed them so badly and they did not have to wait around for consensus so yeah it was a lot easier for the checks to move and it is a really strong Coalition they’ve put together how important do you think are these multilateral efforts now and maybe in the future given the Hungarian uh blocking of EU action absolutely the the absolute you know standstill on some of the EU Aid uh makes clear how important this creative approach to to sourcing uh ammunition and and other items for Ukraine is and in fact they may be talking about the EU partners that are involved in this initiative but there are lots of countries who don’t want to be named who are both buying uh supplies for Ukraine and selling them for Ukraine they don’t want to be seen shipping anything directly to Ukraine and that’s why the cchs are serving sort of as a middleman and they’ve been able to get around a lot of both the uh sort of political problems other countries might have in supporting the program but also getting around the protectionism that you see in the EU weapons industry and and trying to only sell uh things that they produce themselves yeah the EU talking about producing it themselves they pledge to boost their ability to manufacture shells how is that going well they absolutely have boosted their ability and some companies have increased their output by four times there is still a big problem Nicole in getting the orders in now the manufacturers have have really scaled up and say we could produce a lot more but governments still aren’t buying them so there was this initiative to get Ukraine 1 million rounds of 155 millimeter ammunition by March and they didn’t make that deadline the EU says they will ship that many rounds uh by the end of the year and they’re saying with this check initiative coming from the EU that’s going to be an even greater number but they weren’t able to move as quickly as as they had hoped to that’s for sure as DW’s Terry Schultz in Brussels thank you so much for your reporting Terry

Spain, Belgium and Portugal, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is on a whirlwind tour of Europe seeking to drum up more support for his country’s fight against Russia’s attacks.
In Belgium, Zelenskyy inspected the American-made F16 jets Ukraine should start receiving soon. Kyiv is increasingly relying on bilateral agreements with individual states, while Hungary continues to block much needed aid coming from the European Union

#ukrainewar #russia #ukraine

Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/user/deutschewelleenglish?sub_confirmation=1

For more news go to: http://www.dw.com/en/
Follow DW on social media:
►Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/deutschewellenews/
►Twitter: https://twitter.com/dwnews
►Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dwnews
►Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/dwnews_hangout
Für Videos in deutscher Sprache besuchen Sie: https://www.youtube.com/dwdeutsch